Category: Garden

Zeiss Victory 8×32

Trying out some Zeiss Victory 8×32 binoculars and they’re impressive for looking at the sparrows, goldfinches and tits on the feeders but if it’s cool enough tomorrow I look forward to taking them out on location on an RSPB reserve.

It looks like being a clear night, so I’ll turn them on the night sky, with a waxing moon and the ‘Summer Triangle’ of the bright stars Deneb, Vega and Altair over the wood, so we’ll be looking towards the Milky Way. The the ratio of magnification to the size of the objective lenses, 8×32, gives them good light-gathering powers, better than the same binoculars in the more powerful 10×32 version.

They’re equally impressive for close-ups: at 6ft 4inches tall, I can’t quite focus on my feet, but if there was a dragonfly on the ground just three feet in front of me I could easily focus on that.

Every Flower Counts #2

I didn’t have a ball to throw over my shoulder to select my random square metre for last month’s survey but since then a fox has deposited this cricket practice ball in our back garden. I must return it to Rogue, the springer spaniel two doors along from us.
The flowerheads of ribwort plantain and catsear fell just outside my square metre.

It’s the last day to take part in Plantlife’s ‘Every Flower Counts’ follow-up survey, in my case to see how our front lawn has progressed since its last mowing at the end of ‘No-mow May’.

In my randomly chosen square metre there are just 9 white clover flowerheads, most of them already partially going to seed, so my nectar score is a little disappointing:

But it is a lot better than my ‘No Mow May’ score because a handful white clover flowerheads can produce more nectar than the 75 germander speedwell flowers that I counted last month so the lawn is producing 10 milligrams of nectar per square metre, an improvement on the 1.7 at the end of May, and the whole lawn can potentially support 13 bees, up from 2 in the last survey.

Horseshoe Geranium

pelargonium

The horseshoe geranium, more accurately known as the zonal pelargonium, is a hybrid species whose wild ancestors grew in Mediterranean climate zones. Because it wasn’t suited to surviving our winters, gardeners used to keep it going through the winter as stem cuttings. This can mean the expense of heating a greenhouse and there is the possibility of plants being susceptible to virus, so it’s more usual these days to grow it from seed.

Our neighbour has grown some this year and gave us this plant as a small seedling. It wasn’t too happy growing on our kitchen windowsill and its leaves turned red. We’ve discovered this was probably because it was getting too cold at night. It’s thriving now though in its small pot. Apparently if you give them too large a pot, they put their efforts into vegetative growth instead of flowering.

pelargonium flowerhead

The flowers have no scent but the leaves have a pungency that reminds me of dustiness. This probably dates back to my childhood experience of geraniums, which were often leggy plants growing on dusty windowsills in primary schools.

flowers from the garden

The cold hasn’t just affected our indoor geranium: the sweet peas have been very slow to start flowering and the three stems in this bottle are the first we’ve picked.

basil
Basil: we did grow some from seed earlier in the year, but this is a plant from the garden centre that we’re growing on.

Wentworth Castle

Meadow vetchling, heath bedstraw and cocksfoot grass in the Deer Park at Wentworth Castle, artichoke, a grass-head, a multi-stemmed cypress trunk and a dead hedge in the gardens around the house.

Taken using the macro lens on my Olympus OM10-D E-10 MarkII DSLR except for the cypress, taken on my iPhone 11, as I couldn’t get the angle that I was after with the macro.

Astrantia

small tortoiseshell

At first glance you might not suspect that Astrantia was a member of the cow parsley family, Apiaceae, but the little umbel of the flowerheads and the rosette of bracts are a clue. It’s popular with pollinators – such as this small tortoiseshell at Wentworth Castle this morning – and long-lasting, so we think that we could find a space for it in our flower border.

Diana’s Sheds

Catching up with our friend Diana is hot work this morning, sitting in her conservatory overlooking the back garden, in contrast to midsummer’s day when there were a few patches of frost in the Dales and our thermostat switched on the central heating for the first time in months.

Radula Marks

radula marks

I always slip my Olympus Tough camera into my pocket when I set out to work in the garden and, even before I’d started repotting plants in the greenhouse, I noticed these zig-zag patterns on the seed tray I was using.

radula marks

They look like the marks left by a snail scraping away a film of algae from the surface of the tray.

Probably one of the garden snails that I’ve evicted from the greenhouse on several occasions.

Foxglove

foxglove

Of course I’ll draw them when they’re in flower, but I like foxgloves at this stage, with the cluster of flower buds beginning to unfurl.

foxglove buds

My company as I draw this on my wild flower patch at the end of the garden includes a female sparrow picking over the wood chip path, a blackbird singing behind me over the hedge, a dunnock giving its hurried trill and a jumping spider checking out my legs. I’m wearing shorts so I can track its progress over my hairy legs without looking up from my drawing, so I miss its daring leap from knee to knee.

foxglove

The rosette of leaves at the foot of the plant also makes an interesting subject. But I will draw those flowers as they appear over the next few weeks.

Every Flower Counts

results

With ‘No Mow May’ drawing to a close, it’s time to count the flowers that have sprung up on our front lawn. I throw a small chunk of wood over my shoulder to randomly select my square metre sample.

Results: 8 daisies, 2 common mouse-ear and 75 germander speedwell flowers.

Plantlife calculate that, taking this as an average for my 14.4 square metre lawn, the flowers are producing 1.7 milligrams of nectar per square metre, enough to support 2 bees across the entire lawn.

Let’s hope that I can improve on that with next year’s ‘Every Flower Counts’ survey.

Sun Spurge

sun spurge

My peppers are more than ready for potting on but I wanted to draw this Sun Spurge, Euphorbia helioscopia, now going to seed, before I do that. I took the soil for the peppers from the greenhouse, so it’s not surprising that this sprouted. Spurge ‘bribes’ ants to disperse its seed by tempting them with oil-rich attachments – elaiosomes – which the ants or their larvae eat before discarding the seed.

Like all euphorbias, as a deterrent to herbivores, the Sun Spurge has milky, latex sap that can cause irritation.