Sunshine in the Garden.

Bank Holiday Monday was another glorious day. We spent the morning sunning ourselves in the garden again and then most of the afternoon taking an interminably long time to prepare for an overnight trip (of which more to follow).

We’ve regularly had a female Broad-bodied Chaser in the garden over the last fortnight. I had convinced myself that it was the same one each time, since it seemed to be quite small of its kind, but then, a couple of days ago, I saw two close together, both of the same size, which has obviously put a huge dent in my conviction. Whether or not it was the same one each time, I’ve really enjoyed taking photos.

 

I took some photos of flowers too. This must be a knapweed of some description. TBH has planted them in the garden in several places. The bees seem to like them too…

Large Red Damselfly.

Peony.

I’ve been noticing the sounds of Starlings a lot whilst out and about, since coming across the nest on the Lots. B and I spotted some Starlings which were surely visiting a nest in a hedgerow beside Moss Lane. There have been a lot of Starlings on the feeders in our neighbour’s garden too.

Here they are perched in the top of our Silver Birch.

 

Advertisements

Weeds

I’ve just embarked on reading Richard Mabey’s book ‘Weeds – How Vagabond Plants Gatecrashed Civilisation and Changed the Way We Think About Nature’. I haven’t got very far with it yet, but I can tell that I’m going to like it. Apparently, many of our most familiar weeds are not indigenous plants, but arrived with our Neolithic ancestors along with the seeds of the crops they brought with them, and so are ultimately from Mesopotamia, the cradle of agriculture. Our garden is full of half-tolerated interlopers which have quietly invaded over several summers. The Bluebells which have colonised one of the beds are, I’m pretty sure, Spanish Bluebells, rather than the native variety, which have become a pest nationally because they are spreading to our woods where they hybridise with the native species, producing a highly fertile offspring which loses some of the characteristics of the native type.

Green Alkanet would, I suspect, happily completely take over our garden if left to get on with it. It’s a species introduced as a herbal long ago, but is now completely naturalised.

Bees in particular seem to love it. I think that this might be an Early Bumblebee…

…which seem to be enormously variable in colouration. Those pollen baskets are very laden!

Columbine is, as far as I know, a genuinely native plant, which has, happily, seeded all over our garden.

The flowers are stunning.

I can’t find this little chap…

…in my field guide, but she/he is an odd looking character.

Rounded Snail (perhaps?)

Blackbird.

 

Moulting Roe Deer

Our guest has been back in the garden again.

Far Other Worlds…

I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to think what I did with the rest of the weekend after my walk by the Lune. It took a a while, but it’s come back to me. I had things to do in the garden. My Dad had pointed out that the woodwork around our garage roof is need of a coat of…..varnish? Woodstain? Treatment? Anyway, whatever the stuff is that woodwork generally gets painted with. With a recommendation from a knowledgable friend I’d been to buy the requisite ‘stuff’, between dropping B off for his match and my walk by the river. When we got back, I set about preparing the ground; pressure washing and then sugar-soaping all of the woodwork. Then I read the instructions on the tin and discovered that the ‘stuff’ shouldn’t be applied when the temperature is below eight degrees. It was five. Bother. Is almost what I said at the time.

Not to worry. There were leaves to be swept up and composted and the Virginia Creeper which is supposed to climb attractively up the garage wall, had overstepped the mark and was now enveloping the entire roof, like some many tentacled Kraken, and threatening to lever off some of the roof-tiles. Before I could get in to hack that back, I had to lop another belligerent shrub, an overgrown Viburnum which was preventing me from reaching parts of the creeper.

That, and other odds and ends, kept me occupied for the Saturday afternoon, and for most of the Sunday, and, in honesty, whilst most of the cuttings have gone in the green bins, or been through the shredder and then added to the compost, the larger branches from the shrub are sitting in an unruly pile on the patio waiting for me to do something with them.

Anyway, the point is, when I finally called time on my ‘uncessant labours’, I took a wander down to the Cove, arriving just as the sun disappeared.

Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less,

Withdraws into its happiness;

The mind, that ocean where each kind

Does straight its own resemblance find,

Yet it creates, transcending these,

Far other worlds, and other seas;

Annihilating all that’s made

To a green thought in a green shade.

from The Garden by Andrew Marvell

I know that I’ve quoted bits of this poem here before. The whole thing is here.

Maybe, the busy day which had preceded it made sitting on the bench watching the colours change in the sky and reflected in the water and the mud all the sweeter?

Sparrowhawk

We were in the process of getting three generations of the family out of the house and into the car for a trip out. Somebody, I think my Mum, had wandered around into the back garden and called the rest of us to see the commotion on the trampoline. A raptor had killed a pigeon, but was now confused by the netting around the trampoline and was struggling to get out.

Some of my bird books say that Sparrowhawks only take small birds, so although I thought this probably was a Sparrowhawk, I had my doubts, and wanted an expert opinion. My friend the Proper Birder tells me that this is definitely a Sparrowhawk, a first year female apparently. As with most raptors, the females are larger and are capable of taking something as large as a pigeon.

 

Garden Guests Again.

At this point, it would be ideal if I had something intelligent to say about these deer, which were wandering around on our patio recently. I wondered whether I could age this buck from its antlers. The answer is a qualified ‘yes‘. It’s not as simple as counting the tines, although the fact that there are three here does mean that this buck is at least three years old. After that it gets more difficult.

 

A Tawny Owl on the Windowsill.

The title just about says it all. We came home from our camping trip and were spreading out wet stuff on the patio to dry.

“There’s an owl on the windowsill!” Little S told us.

I hadn’t looked up to notice at that point.

The owl was even less observant. It would occasionally half open its eyes to look at us without much curiosity, but then quickly dozed off again.

Of course, if you have an owl on your windowsill, then you can have your photo taken with it…

It was around two o’clock when S first spotted the owl.

It stayed all day. Around nine in the evening, by which time it was getting pretty dark, the owl had started to look a little more lively, although it still seemed to be dozing from time to time.

I sat outside and watched it for quite a while, hoping to see it fly off. When all I could see was a dark shadow of the top of its head, I moved inside and watched it through the window, but eventually gave up. Even when it finally flew it would be too dark for me to see anything. Sometime before midnight it did eventually leave.

Since then, when we open the curtains in the morning, we keep checking to see if it has returned, but it hasn’t yet.