Category: Garden

Ribwort Plantain

plantain3.05 p.m.: A dunnock bursts into hurried song from the top of the freshly green hedge, then flies off on its rounds.

sparrowmagpieHouse sparrows are engaged in some dispute down in the hedge, repeatedly cheep, cheep, cheeping at each other.

The breeze whips around as a large grey cloud arrives from the west. Hanging from my bag in the sun, my key-fob thermometer shows a pleasant 70ºF, 22ºC; as the sun goes behind the cloud the temperature drops 20 degrees Fahrenheit to 50ºF, 10ºC.

bumble beeA large bumble bee prospects under a pile of mossy/grassy debris by the compost bin. I’ve been considering providing an insect hotel.

Common knapweed,  ribwort plantain and cow parsley are sprouting in our meadow area; less welcome are the creeping buttercup and particularly the chicory which, attractive as its sky blue flowers are, could easily take over, spreading by its rootstock in our deep, rich soil.

handGold-tipped feathery moss spreads over the bare patches of soil. My aim is to weed out the chicory and docks and this year to plant pot-grown wild flowers to add some interest and wildlife value . . . and to give me more subjects to draw.

Grape Hyacinth

muscari
Grape hyacinth, Muscari

4.45 p.m., 51ºF, 11ºC: Grape hyacinth was included in the ‘good for pollinators’ collection of bulbs that we planted in the shady, north north-west facing bed below the window at the front of the house. It’s the first time that we’ve had this familiar looking spring bulb in flower in our garden.

Crusty Lichen

crustose lichensporangia10.30 a.m.: At first sight this crustose lichen looks like nothing more than a pale stain on the sandstone block at the edge of the raised bed behind the pond. I’m using crayons this morning and the nearest match that I can get is mineral green, applied very lightly with a dash of other colours added. Using watercolours I would have got nearer to the grey in my photograph.

The black oval sporangia* are about a millimetre across.

crustose lichenA neighbouring colony of the same lichen is more densely peppered with sporangia and they appear to me to have a slight brownish cast, like coffee grounds.

I find the details easier to take in on my macro photographs than in real life but peering closely I notice a springtail wandering by. The springtail is a hexapod and it is no longer classified as an insect.

Continue reading Crusty Lichen

Peony Buds

peony buds4.25 p.m., 40ºF, 5ºC: I find peonies more interesting to draw when the buds are opening up than when they open up into frothy flower-heads, which in our garden often get battered down by summer rain.

There was a dispute over the patio nest box this afternoon: two blue tits looked on anxiously from the clothes line as a female sparrow perched on the front of the box taking a good look in the nest-hole. blue titsparrowSparrows and blue tits took an interest in the box last year but it was finally occupied by red-tailed bumblebees. These birds had better stake their claim soon.

Ruby Giant

South Ossett roof.

crocus ruby giant
Ruby Giant Crocus

The mixed pack of Wildlife Haven bulbs that we put in a shady, clayey north-east facing bed at the front of the house last autumn are doing well. I’ll put some more elsewhere in the garden next autumn.

The crocuses Cream Beauty and Ruby Giant are in flower but not open on this cool afternoon (39ºF, 4ºC).

Winter aconite
Winter aconite

Winter aconites are starting to show and we’re curious to see the aliums and the eranthis also included in this selection.

front garden, South Ossettbulb packdaffodilsI prefer the miniature daffodils to the full size version in this bed. The clumps of large daffodils usually end up sprawling over the path, weighed down after rain.

Link: Verve and Blooma who produced the collection of Wildlife Haven bulbs for pollinators (which were stocked at B&Q last autumn)

Front Garden

front gardenflower bedThe heather that we planted in this bed in our front garden, alongside the pavement, was never happy, despite our attempts to make the soil more acid by adding sulphur chips. It got smothered by grass stems and ivy. The ivy was beginning to climb the mountain ash which we planted strategically to mask the lamp post behind it.

I like ivy as it’s provides year round cover for spiders and snails and a foraging area for wrens and dunnocks plus the occasional toad and hedgehog but I must admit that it was starting to look rather overgrown and uncared for.

daffodilsWe’ve been inspired by a sloping bed in a similar position right next to the road at the garden centre at Cannon Hall to try something different but hopefully equally wildlife friendly.

We’ll dispense with the old log roll that we used to create a raised bed for the heather and the conifers and go for a gentle slope instead, covered with bark chippings.

 

Spring Weeds

red dead-nettle red dead-nettle1.15 p.m., 49ºF, 9ºC, sun through high hazy cloud, cool breeze from north northwest: These weeds on the L-shaped bed are going to have to go soon as the weather has suddenly turned springlike, the vernal equinox is almost upon us and it’s time to start thinking about planting veg.

I draw red dead-nettle and a weed, a crucifer, which I wouldn’t attempt to identify before the seed-pods start showing, and by that time I should have weeded it out.

mystery weed weed stemOur crops will need protection, not only from the wood pigeons but also from the possibility of next door’s hens coming over to scrat about. The little red hen has already made it through to us under the hedge and she must have liked what she found as our neighbour couldn’t entice her back and had to come around to retrieve her.

dunnockAs I draw there’s a loud song from the hedge just a few yards from me but every time I turn around there’s no sign of the bird. Eventually its head pops up at the top of the hedge: it’s a dunnock. It’s song has more get-up-and-go than the comparatively relaxed, reflective phrases of the robin.

Rhubarb Tree

rhubarbI thought that we’d lost our rhubarb this year but after losing an early leaf or two in the frost, the red buds are pushing up again through the wood chip at the edge of the path at foot of the hawthorn hedge. It’s the sunny side of the garden, facing southwest. The rhubarb has grown here since we moved in over thirty years ago, sprouting every year amongst the nettle leaves and the trailing stems of periwinkle. Snowdrops have spread along the foot of the hedge nearby.

Rhubarb leaves come pre-packed in their egg-shaped buds. As they unfurl, I would describe the wavy pattern of the emerging leaf as carunculated, like an elephants skin.

blue titThe blue tit has a hurried and rather petulant song which hints at the sound of a child’s bicycle bell. It continues this in flight.

Eggs, birds singing in the trees, leaves like elephants’ ears . . . it reminds me of a playground poem, c.1960:

The elephant is a pretty bird,
It flits from bough to bough.
It makes its nest in a rhubarb tree
And whistles like a cow.

11.40 a.m.: The high pressure is holding over the weekend. It’s still with hazy sunshine. Warm enough to simply walk out of the back door into the garden and draw gloveless. For the first time this year as I set out drawing, I’m wearing jeans not insulated outdoor trousers.

A Bird in the Hand

red henDo you ever have one of those mornings when you’re sitting on the sofa relaxing with your morning cup of tea and a woman in wellies walks through the room clutching a chicken. Well, to give her her due, our neighbour Juliet did remove her wellies beforehand and had apologised in advance, explaining that the children had let the chickens out earlier and one little red hen had made its way under the hedge into our back garden and had settled by our shed and couldn’t be enticed back even with the promise of food.

ebook guideBut the odd thing is that at the moment I’m reading How to Publish Your Own eBook, which includes, on a sample page of an Apple iBooks’ publication, a photograph of someone holding a red hen under their arm. Just like Juliet as she breezed through before breakfast (we’re semi-detached so that’s the only way from back to front).

Link: MagBooks How to Publish Your Own eBook

Which was written by journalist and photographer Nik Rawlinson

Mole Map

mole mapOver the weekend I noticed that the mole has extended its excavations into the flower border below the bird feeders. For the last few weeks that single molehill, right in the middle of the lawn, had been the only sign of its activity.

moleIf I can infer the layout of its tunnels from the heaps of earth above ground, the main tunnel runs west northwest to east northeast. This is along the contour of the slope. Would a down-slope tunnel be at more risk of flooding?

Mossy Rocks

mossy rocksI can find a quality of wilderness in moss-covered rubble, flooded fields and tumbling willows, so I didn’t have far to go to find a subject this morning. These chunks of sandstone form a wall around the raised bed behind the pond. We used the soil that we excavated from the pond to make the raised bed.

It’s a still, sunny morning with a clear blue sky but although the temperature has risen to 50ºF, 10ºC, there’s still thin ice along one side of the pond.

There’s a jingly song from the next garden which I take to be a dunnock:

‘pwik – kiwik – pwik – chEE’

dunnockMy bird book (Alan J Richards, British Birds, A Field Guide) describes the song as ‘a not unmusical jingle of notes, shorter in duration and less powerful than the Wren’s’. The wren belts out its song so emphatically that you know it means business.