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.
It’s years since we bought any marigolds but they’re good at spreading their seeds around the garden. We’ll have plenty of seedlings next year at the top end of the border.
Also well able to seed itself around, the Welsh poppy. If it just spread by seed that would suit me but, unlike the marigold, it can establish itself as a perennial, building up deep dandelion-like tap roots and crowding out other flowers.
This heron, preening in a quiet corner at Adel Dam became watchful and alert when first a buzzard and then a sparrowhawk flew overhead.
10.25 a.m., cumulo stratus 80%, 59°F, 15°C, back garden.
The perennial cornflower was originally a plant I introduced from my mum’s large, leafy and well-stocked garden. It has settled in well, scattering its seeds along our border. I’m sure that we never planted it at this end, by the corner of the patio next to the bird bath. There’s often a blackbird or sometimes a sparrow sitting on the edge of the patio here and I guess that’s how it found it’s way here, in a bird dropping. It also spreads via creeping rhizome.
As its scientific name, Centaurea montana, suggests, it’s a plant of subalpine meadows and open woodland in Europe, ranging from the Ardennes the Pyrenees and in the east as far as the Balkans.
We’ve had more colour in the border this autumn than we had in the summer. The pot marigold, Calendula, which we planted a year or two ago at this end of the border has spread across the back garden, popping up in the veg beds and in the greenhouse.
As it flies – ‘as the crow flies’, in a straight line – this carrion crow makes a call that I describe as ‘Tchuik! Tuikk! Twik!’ in my sketch: not the harsh, croaking ‘Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!’ that I associate with crows. The Handbook of British Birds describes this call as ‘a higher-pitched, complaining “keerk, keerk, keerk”.
I hear the regular ‘caw’ half an hour later after a commotion with the local magpies at the edge of the wood, which have been making their chattering rattling calls in the tall ash trees.
The sparrows chirping in the hedge are a more homely soundtrack for my drawing. It’s feels like a treat to be out of doors drawing from nature again.