Snow, rapidly melting, at the hospice this morning.
Snowy Morning
Category: Garden
The Veg Shed
Like a scene from Peter Rabbit, a woman walks up the garden path to Hilary’s cafe with a large bunch of fresh carrots, holding them by the lush ferny foliage of the carrot tops.
She’s soon back down the shed, returning again with three Petanque boule-size beetroots, again with fresh-looking foliage.
“I only came here for a cup of coffee!” she explains.
Squirrel Baffle
Rainy, grey skies, a wind from the north, so it doesn’t feel like the first day of meteorological spring.
8.30 a.m.: A grey squirrel bounds across the lawn.
It soon realises that it can’t climb around the baffle on the bird feeder post.
It climbs into the hawthorn hedge and you can see it weighing up the possibilities. No, not worth it. It scampers off across next door’s lawn.
Spring Flowers
Barbara’s brother John has seen the outside world just once in the last month on a brief wheelchair tour of the Hospice grounds so he asked us to photograph some of the spring flowers that are currently coming up in our garden.
The rest of the garden is ready for a bit of a spring clean but the crocus, daffodils, irises, winter aconite and pulmonaria give a welcome burst of colours.
Hellebore
Drifts of snowdrops, winter aconites and a variety of hellebores at Brodsworth Hall this morning.
February Flowers
There are a few bright spots of colour beginning to appear on the raised bed behind the pond.
With the afternoon light starting to fade I went for the easier option of photographing them and drawing from my iPad.
This is my first drawing with my refreshed Winsor and Newton watercolour box which I’ve filled with botanical subjects in mind and so far it seems to be working.
Pheasants at the Feeders
Five female pheasants alternated from pecking around the feeders for spilt sunflower hearts and crumbs from the fat balls to drinking at the pond (and one unwisely tried to run across the surface of the water!) then going down to the veg beds to rest for a while.
One pheasant, feeding on its own at that time, suddenly burst into a ‘mad half hour’ routine, as my mum used to describe similar behaviour in a cat; darting around and flouncing its feathers as if it was being threatened by some invisible enemy. This lasted less than a minute, not a full half hour.
Marigold Seeds
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.
Clouds in my Coffee
“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).
Link
Cutting Back
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.