Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
We’ve never needed to sow marigold seeds over the past few years as they seed themselves in the flower border and around the veg beds.
I’ve drawn one of the seed heads from different angles seen in close up through my magnifier desk lamp.
Drawn with my TWSBI Eco-T pen filled with De Atramentis sepia brown ink.
“Who sings this one?”
“I can hardly hear it,” the waitress replies.
“You’re So Vain.”
“Oh … Carly Simon.”
“That’s it! Brilliant.”
“Shows my age.”
“I’m not surprised she knew,” chips in the other waitress, “She’s always singing. Every day is karaoke here.”
It’s the one with the line ‘I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee’, which is appropriate because I’m on to my second latté at the Thorncliffe Tasting Room, Emley, while Barbara does a round of the adjoining farm shop for a bag of shopping, including this cauliflower.
This was our first visit to the Tasting Room, although we’d often called at the farm shop but we’ll soon go back there. It’s only six miles from home but it’s another 150 metres in altitude. The panorama included Drax Power Station (currently burning wood pellets sourced from old growth forests in Canada according a recent BBC investigation).
It got a bit neglected during the heatwave but now’s a good time to strim back the vegetation around the pond and trim the hawthorn hedges.
I had a near miss as I strimmed around the pond when I disturbed a large frog, but fortunately it hopped away unharmed. I’ve left a fringe of vegetation around the edges of the pond.
Our visit to the walled garden at Temple Newsam brought back memories of working on the Readers’ Digest Guide to Creative Gardening, published in 1984. Rue and goldenrod, two of the plants that I needed to draw, are still growing there and I might have drawn a stately-looking Thalictrum here too, but I didn’t spot that on our visit.
Yesterday, 4.30 pm: The Ice Plant, formerly know as Sedum spectabile (will I ever remember that it’s now Hylotelephium?), sits in the last patch of sunlight on an early autumn afternoon as the house casts its shadow further down the back lawn. Its candy pink flower heads are constantly being visited by small bees and occasional bumblebee.
The small bees are gingery light brown with 5 or 66 dark horizontal stripes on the abdomen, so they look like our regular honey bees.
A buzzard circles over the wood and meadow, against a sky latticed with vapour trails alongside diaphanous swirls of cirrus.
I’m eyed warily by a bird in the hawthorn hedge. I get a brief impression of an eye stripe, so a dunnock, a wren or perhaps even an autumn migrant warbler dropping in.
The blue tit and a long-tailed tit seem to have decided that I’m harmless and they’re coming to the sunflower heart feeders just a few feet away from me.
A comfortable 20℃, 69℉, here in the shade with a hint of breeze to keep it fresh.
Back down a rather overgrown bark chip path to my ‘Rough Patch’ in our back garden. The birds have finished nesting and it’s time to cut back.
This is my first attempt at composing a backing track in Garageband and also my first experiment with a dji Osmo gimbal mount for my iPhone.
It looks as if it’s going to be our best year yet for our cordon apples, especially the Howgate Wonder which I recently had to tie in because of the weight of fruit and leafy growth. Summer pruning seems to suit them best, encouraging fruiting spurs to form.
The weight of apples and leafy summer growth proved too much of our Howgate Wonder double cordon and one of the main branches collapsed forwards on the patio. It wasn’t broken so we tied it back in, pruned back the majority of this year’s leafy growth and picked up the eight or so apples that fell off during the process. They’re not ripe but we can stew them with a bit of brown sugar and water.
There’s just time for one last sowing for late summer vegetables. Going through the packets of seeds that we’ve already got in, there are eight that I can try but there’s only a 4 by almost 8 foot section of raised bed that I can fit them into, so I’ve gone for 2 foot squares instead of rows to get more in.
| Calendula | Carrot | Kohl Rabi | Spring Onion |
| Salad leaves | French bean | Perpetual Spinach | Pea |
Some of the crops, such as salad leaves, will stay where I’ve sown them but as we clear the potatoes and other crops over the next few weeks I’ll be able to plant some on, such as the French beans and perpetual spinach.
Our first attempt at the Great Yorkshire Creature Count got off to a good start with four elephant hawkmoths in the moth trap this morning, along with peppered moth, flame and heart and dart. I left the box wedged right up against the hedge under the crab apple so that they don’t get picked off by the birds.
I set up the trail cam on the bird table this morning but caught only the regular visitors.
Smooth newts are on the list of creatures that the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust would like us to count, so I did a bit of pond dipping. While I was at it, I skimmed off the duckweed and started taking out the slimy algae that has built up and sunk down into the pond, but this was where most of the newts were hunkered down, so I’ll leave that for another day.
Woodpigeon, dunnock, starling, bullfinch, chaffinch, magpie, greenfinch
Butterfly: Large skipper
Moths (UV trap): peppered moth, common swift, elephant hawkmoth, the flame, heart and dart
I know a lot of the species that the YWT Creature Count is asking use monitor are present but they didn’t show up on the day and I didn’t go digging about to find them.
I tried an overnight trail cam but whatever triggered it once in the middle of the night didn’t show up in the video clip.