FOR A WEEK or two we’ve noticed the Blue Tits been flying back and forth to the nest box near our back door but we’re concerned today because bumblebees have been flying in and out and flying around the box investigating it closely and we haven’t seen the birds. On one occasion a wasp went in but soon came out again.
We’re relieved in the early evening when one of the birds appears again, making several trips in and out with food from the bird feeders. It could be that the female is sitting on eggs and the male feeding her at intervals throughout the day.
We’ve been making the most of what might be the last of a spell of dry settled weather which seems to have lasted for the best part of two months. There could even be a bit of snow coming so today I’m finishing painting the edges of the raised beds. It’s never a job that would be top of your list of essential tasks in the vegetable garden but there’s never going to be a better time to do it as not only is it so dry but there are almost no crops in the bed, so I can push back the soil to paint the timber.
It’s like clearing your desk before you start a new project.
I’M TAKING my time preparing the patch at the end of the garden that I’m hoping to transform into a wild flower meadow. It’s in such an unkempt state because this is the corner that gets used for sorting, shredding and on a couple of occasions burning the debris from trimming hedges, replacing fences and clearing the pond.
Rich disturbed soil like this makes an ideal habitat for a wild flower that I introduced year ago and have often wished that I hadn’t; Chicory. The flowers and the bitter-tasting foliage of this tall, blue-flowered relative of daisies and sunflowers have been eaten in salads and an extract of the roots (and some suggest the seeds too) has been used as a substitute for coffee.
But I’d like our mini-meadow to be diverse rather than being dominated by one plant, however useful it may be, so I’m gradually forking over the area, removing every fragment of root I can spot. This has amounted to four bagfuls of the vermicelli-like ‘roots’. Perhaps I should be turning them into coffee.
After a couple of hours weeding I realise that I need to improve my posture. This is how I picture myself when I’m digging; I feel as if I’m putting a lot of unnecessary strain on my lower back.
A sketch from a photograph that a friend took of me using an edging tool to cut turves on Monday (right) shows that I need to bend even more when I’m using a garden tool with a short handle. Most handles are too short for me, so I’m going to start looking out for a fork with an extra long handle.
On Gardeners’ World presenter Monty Don characteristically stands with his legs apart and now I can see why; the ground is a long way down and with legs apart you can get that bit nearer.
My habitual action when I’ve been digging and want to pick out a weed or rootlet is to bend over, folding myself up in a Z-shape. I guess that it would probably be better for my legs and arms if I adopted an A-shape, legs apart, trying to keep my legs straight, bending at the waist. This stretches my back, and my legs, rather than putting strain on the joints.
I’ve been trying this and I’m convinced that it’s better for my back but I still find myself automatically adopting the ‘Z’ crouch when I need to pick out a piece of root that I’ve just spotted.
“They always say that you should crouch instead of bend,” says Paul, who has helped us out so much in the garden since the autumn.
I guess that you should work in whatever way you find comfortable and that varying your working position is probably a good idea.
THIS AFTERNOON I wanted to do the simplest of drawings so I’ve gone back to ArtPen ink, a water soluble fountain pen ink, using my Pentel water-brush to turn the line to wash.
We’ve arranged these fragments of flaggy sandstone to disguise the edges of the liner of the restored pond. They should be half submerged but as we’ve had no rain the water level has sunk by about 4 inches.
The Smooth Newts have re-established themselves; I’ve just seen three of them on the shallow margin of the pond, one male waving his banner-like tail at a female. We’ve now seen most of our regular garden birds coming down to drink or bathe at the pond’s edge. Insects drink here too; I’ve just rescued a honey-bee that was struggling in the water. A single pond skater is striding across the surface.
THE SUMAC in next door’s front garden keeps its own seasons. While weeping willows are bursting into bright green leaf and birches are showering us with so much pollen that it gives some of us hay fever, the Sumac seems to be stuck in bare-branched mid-winter. In contrast, in a garden at the end of the road, a smaller Sumac has red-velvet fruiting heads.
Male and female flowers grow on different trees, so I’m wondering if this bare tree is a male and the smaller tree a female.
The Stag’s horn Sumac, Rhus typhina, a native of North America, was introduced to Britain in 1629 by John Parkinson.
30 March: after another sunny day the tips of the branches of this Sumac were bursting into leaf by late afternoon. It’s catching up with the season.
BISCUIT is grazing his way around the meadow. We’re now into spring and the evenings are getting longer, a couple of minutes each day but when the clocks go forward and British Summertime starts this weekend, it will suddenly seem as if we’ve gained a whole extra hour.
Buds are swelling on the crab apple and the hawthorn hedge is bursting into bright green leaf. We’re intending this weekend to make a definitive start in the garden. Barbara has weeded the three beds so we should be ready to get the onion sets and garlic bulbs planted. The seed potatoes can probably still be left for a while. I’d also like to get a seedbed going with whatever varieties of vegetables it is appropriate to sow now.
IF YOU represented Lake Windermere as an elongated clock face, today we walked from Ferry House at 9 o’clock to Wray Castle at 11, finishing up at Waterhead, Ambleside, at just past the top of the hour, so about a quarter of the way around England’s largest lake.
This didn’t leave any time for drawing, so I sketched our route from the ferry on the return journey to Bowness.
We had hoped there might be a cafe at Wray Castle, a Victorian country retreat built in the style of a toy fort, but it’s closed at the moment after plans to turn it into an upmarket hotel fell through. The National Trust plans to reopen it to the public . . . and open a cafe there.
Beatrix Potter celebrated her 16th birthday at Wray Castle when the Potter family spent a summer holiday here.
3.30 p.m.; View of Windermere from Costa Coffee at Pringles, Bowness.The small, sometimes winding, roads made sketching from the car difficult.
THE LAKE DISTRICT is so often moody, wrapped in clouds and mist, so today, with ranks of cumulus marching across a clear blue sky and sparkling panoramas unfolding before us, our regular journey was a different experience. After so many years of heading along the Leeds ring road to get on the road to the Lakes, the A65 via Skipton, we’ve found a short cut on smaller quieter roads following the ridges between some of the old woollen towns of the West Riding – Huddersfield, Mirfield, Halifax and Bradford – not far away in the valleys below.
It was so clear that already, as we approached Howarth over the moors, we got glimpses of the sphinx-like peaks of Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent crouching on the limestone plateau of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
Coming this way, along the smaller but slower roads, the Dalesman Cafe at Gargrave, 1 hour 20 minutes but only 40 miles into our journey, makes a timely coffee stop. They specialise in ephemera of the 1950s and 1960s so as I tried a local speciality, buttered Chorley cake, the tins and packages of the period brought back memories for us.
I sketched this shrimping net from an earlier period, still with its canvas bag stencilled ‘W EGLON, NEPTUNE FISH STORES, WHITBY, TEL. 60’. I wonder whereabout in Whitby that was . . .
The Eglons of Whitby
A Google search turns up this reference to the Eglon family from the 1891 census (http://mdfs.net/Docs/Whitby/Census1891/Whitby10), when they were living in four rooms in Elephant & Castle Yard, between Haggersgate and Cliff Street, so very near what is still the fish quay at Whitby. I guess that Neptune Fish Stores would have been there or very near.
4 Elephant & Castle Yard (4 rooms)
Eglon, Christopher - Head - M M 41 - Fish Merchant - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Eliza - Wife - M F 41 - - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Mary E - Daughter - S F 21 - Dressmaker - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, William - Son - S M 19 - Fisherman - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Christopher - Son - M 14 - Errand Boy - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Esther - Daughter - F 12 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, James H - Son - M 10 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
Eglon, Margaret E - Daughter - F 7 - Scholar - YKS, Whitby
William, born in 1872, must be the ‘W. Eglon’ named on the bag but sadly his business, Neptune Fish Stores (Whitby) Ltd, was wound up in 1969, at a time when the traditional English seaside resorts had lost out to competition from package holidays to the Mediterranean.
Sunset across the Lake
Barn owl from Walney Owl Sanctuary, which along with a Little and an Eagle Owl was proving a hit with visitors to the Tourist Information Centre at Bowness.
I’m certainly getting in holiday mood today, I’m beginning to feel like a different person, as if a burden has been lifted from my shoulders, as we approach the Lakes and leave the distractions of home and work behind. As the rugged peaks of the Borrowdale volcanics come into view a Buzzard circles above the road.
Bowness can be as busy as a traditional seaside town – the Blackpool of the Lake District – but, as we’ve booked in for a few days at the Belsfield Hotel overlooking the Lake Windermere, we can stay after the weekend trippers return home.
There’s a perfect sunset, a clear sky across the lake. In this old hotel, originally the home of a wealthy Victorian industrialist, you have the feeling that you’ve got away from everything; as if you’re aboard one of the old, opulent ocean liners. When we walk down for our meal in the sumptuous dining room, past the reception desk, we glimpse sparkling water through the lounge window. You feel that the whole hotel might be gliding over calm waters. Hopefully with no icebergs on the horizon. The bustling piers where the ferries come and go are hidden away behind the grassy banks of the hotel gardens.
IT’S OFTEN NOT recommended to transport frogspawn from one pond to another because of the danger of spreading infection but I feel that I’m safe accepting a couple of clumps from a neighbour across the road whose pond always gets more frogspawn in it than it can accommodate. Our new pond has plenty of room, although the tadpoles, now hatched but still no more than short black dashes resting on the mass of jelly, are going to be at risk of being gobbled by the Smooth Newts that are already settling in to the new pond.
The tap water has had a week now to lose the small traces of chlorine that it contained so I was keen to add some oxygenating pond weeds. My neighbour saved me the trouble and expense of a trip to the garden centre by letting me have half a bucket of strands from his pond. Now the newts have some vegetation that they can lay their eggs on.
THE NEW POND has become disputed territory and there’s a continuing battle between rival Blackbirds. Not only does the sparkling new pond serve as a prominent landmark, it’s also a valuable resource for nesting materials. A female Blackbird appeared to be gathering mud from between rocks we’ve put around the pond to anchor the liner. The mud cup in a Blackbird’s nest is further lined with dry grasses.
The Blue Tits are popping in and out of the nest box but we saw a large bumblebee fly to the hole and crawl inside, so I wonder who will end up in possession.
To the left of the pond I originally tried to create a bog area but I could never get it to work in practice and it never became anything in particular, just whatever became established which might include teasel and hosta but was just as likely to include bramble and hogweed, both of which have their value for wildlife but they can begin to take over.
We’ve levelled the area off ready for turfing, ideally with a wild flower lawn turf, but until we roll that out the House Sparrows are enjoying dust-bathing in the finely raked soil.
I started this mainly wildlife sketchbook in May last year. Hopefully I'll be well into my next wildlife sketchbook by May this year.
It was cooler than I expected this afternoon as I sat in the sun drawing the Periwinkle growing near the rhubarb at the foot of the hedge but it made me feel as if I was at last getting my life where I want it to be. Instead of constructing ponds, creating raised beds and weeding, it is at last getting to the stage where I can relax a bit and just enjoy being out there. Hopefully my sketchbook will start to reflect the arrival of spring.
WE’VE BEEN on the move today but without the car, which has taken a while to get through its MOT test, as things keep cropping up. After 12 years, it’s time to change it, so we took a test drive today in a small car that proved a little too small for me.
On the return journey from the dealers I sketched passengers on the bus. There’s something that you can’t do while you’re driving a car.
Curiously if both Barbara and I are travelling together it works out cheaper to go by taxi as we did on the outward journey. Most bus travellers buy a season ticket but for short journeys without a season ticket we’d always do better going in the car (which we feel we have to have to run our book business).
Once when we were without a car we had to take the bus to make a delivery on the other side of Wakefield and the bus fares of £16 or £17 more or less soaked up any profit we might have made on the order. Having a coffee when we arrived probably soaked up the remainder!
I’m not sure why we had to go together with the order. Guess it’s more fun with company.
Starlings love the dense foliage of the holm oaks which are neatly trimmed into fat topiary lollipops in the Cathedral Precinct in Wakefield.
FOR A WEEK or two we’ve noticed the Blue Tits been flying back and forth to the nest box near our back door but we’re concerned today because bumblebees have been flying in and out and flying around the box investigating it closely and we haven’t seen the birds. On one occasion a wasp went in but soon came out again.
We’re relieved in the early evening when one of the birds appears again, making several trips in and out with food from the bird feeders. It could be that the female is sitting on eggs and the male feeding her at intervals throughout the day.
We’ve been making the most of what might be the last of a spell of dry settled weather which seems to have lasted for the best part of two months. There could even be a bit of snow coming so today I’m finishing painting the edges of the raised beds. It’s never a job that would be top of your list of essential tasks in the vegetable garden but there’s never going to be a better time to do it as not only is it so dry but there are almost no crops in the bed, so I can push back the soil to paint the timber.
