Sawdust puzzle

The tomatoes in the greenhouse growbags are doing well so far, but the presence of sawdust on some of the leaves had me puzzled for a bit.  Sawdust, in an aluminium greenhouse?  Then I spotted the hole in one of the bamboo canes supporting one of the tomato plants - a neat little circular hole where something has bored into, or out of, the cane.  If it has gone in, why?  And if it came out, where is it now, and what is it doing?  I suspect it may be woodworm, of which we have plenty in the woodstore, but I wasn't expecting it in the greenhouse.  I would have thought that a bamboo cane would have been hard work for a woodworm.  The canes came from the garden centre; usually I use buddleja prunings, but I needed something slim enough to fit the holes provided in the new ring culture pots.

The weather has become even cooler - mid-teens and colder at night - and there have been a couple of miserably wet days (which is quite genuinely good for the garden, but not with wind and cold).  This has prompted some belated work in the greenhouse: seed-sowing and potting on of cuttings.  On dry days I've also started digging out the 'volunteer' raspberry canes in the veg patch, and getting at the nettle roots and other weeds around them while I was at it.  I need to clear more ground in the veg patch if all my new seeds are to find a home!  Most of the broad beans have been used, so their patch will soon be vacated (although it's not long now until the autumn-sown beans for next year go in ....).  The garlic bulbs have been plaited and hung up, and there were a number of little bulblets in the stems which I've potted up in the hope of getting next year's crop for free; if that works, they too will soon need a home.

The shrub roses are coming to an end, at least as far as pickable flowers is concerned, though I managed a nice posy of 'Felicia', 'Koenigin von Daenemark' and Gallica officinalis.  The other posy currently on the go is a much less tasteful, but definitely zingier, mix of dahlias ('Juliet' and 'Bishop of Auckland'), mixed zinnias and Crocosmia 'Lucifer'.  The zinnias are doing well and are quite a success; I'm pleased with them this year.

Last roses

Zinnias, dahlias and crocosmia

 Another success has been the fleecing up of the blackcurrant bush, resulting in several pots of jam and still more berries to come.  We've also had the first of the 'Belle de Fontenay' potatoes.  The first courgette buds are showing, so that's another glut on the way soon ....

Just as I thought that we'd had all the baby blackbirds for this year, a youngster, still with his gape and noisily demanding food, turned up in the raspberry patch this afternoon.  I think Mum was glad of the bare soil where I dug out the nettles yesterday as a source of worms.  There are still quite a few little sparrows being fed; a little dunnock showed up briefly the other day and three young starlings appeared this afternoon to pick over the lawn.  A greenfinch comes occasionally for a drink, as does Lefty the lame pigeon.  Today the pair of pigeons who 'own' our garden decided to have a spa morning in the birdbath, bathing and preening happily together (a bit of a squeeze - it's not that big a birdbath!).  There are other birds around in the background: a wren glimpsed briefly, a nuthatch heard pecking in the ash tree and a yellowhammer calling somewhere in the distance.

The first truss of flowers on the buddleja is out, but it hasn't been weather for butterflies to emerge; it's long sleeves and sweatshirt weather, even indoors.  And hot soup for lunch.  In July.  The forecast for August is no better.

Unaccompanied minors

Looking for ants: young green woodpecker (and blackbird)

Nesting time for the birds is pretty much over for another year, and the adults are feeding up the last brood (still one young blackbird being fed, and a lot of young sparrows).  We've been seeing quite a few young birds which are now independent and going about their business on their own.  The blackbirds have three youngsters in all, including two who seem to be doing their own thing, even though mum and dad are still about.  There have been a few young blue tits on the peanut container, at least one spotty little robin down in the damsons, a little goldfinch and a few woodpeckers, both great-spot and green; the green woodpecker plucked up the courage to come down one day in search of ants on the lawn, probably having noticed the blackbirds raiding the ants' nests that developed in the cowslip patch (which has now been mown down).  Other bird visitors have been the first nuthatch seen since they left the nest, and the goldcrest, searching for spiders on the rotary dryer.  I suspect that the goldcrest is around much more than I realise, but being small and inconspicuous he probably goes unnoticed.  They're usually birds of conifer woodlands, and conifers are few and far between around here (unless you count our Leylandii hedge).

The pigeon visitors have also increased, almost certainly as a result of the hay-cutting in the fields around us.  For most of the summer so far we've had a single pair, but as soon as the hay was cut Lefty the lame pigeon and at least one other pigeon appeared in the garden.  Lefty has been raiding one of the alpine strawberry plants, but I'm too soft-hearted to chase him away; it's good to see him still around.

Butterflies are becoming a little more numerous in the garden - speckled wood, tortoiseshell, one red admiral and of course the cabbage whites.  The mullein moth caterpillars disappeared, presumably having turned into chrysalises or whatever their next stage is.  Lots of bees, enjoying the clover in the lawn and the oregano.

The vegetable patch is still very dry, though there has been a little more rain recently; it has been less warm but very breezy, which dries the soil out.  (This has been quite a breezy year so far; I haven't been tempted to eat outside very much.)  The new rhubarb plant is settling in nicely, though, as have the courgettes and borlotti beans.  We've also had the first few potatoes.  On the fruit side, the gooseberry harvest has been good.  I did some pruning and thinning out in the winter, which I've seriously neglected in the past, and it has paid good dividends; the pruned bushes are healthier, with bigger and sweeter fruit than before.  The raspberries (when I can get at them before the blackbirds) are also good; the plants really need replacing, but I'll give them a bit more attention this year.

Sweet peas ('Royal Romance' and 'Athena')

There has been a steady supply of Sweet William and sweet peas for the house, as well as roses, and the first dahlias are out.  'Juliet' is good, and 'Jescot Julie' would be but for a serious infestation of the ubiquitous blackfly.  The Cosmos are starting to flower, and the first Zinnia opened the other day.  The patio pots have finally been planted up; they still need to fill out a bit, but don't look too bad grouped together in a corner.

Spem in Allium

I must get better at watering the garden, particularly the veg patch.  The weather has been mostly warm, dry and breezy, and thin, poor soil like ours dries out very quickly in conditions like that.  The shallots, which hadn't made a lot of top growth, were looking very parched, and the garlic tops had started to fall over; I noticed that other blog posters were lifting theirs, so I did likewise and let them dry off for a day (now moved into the greenhouse in anticipation of rain).  I have to admit that I grow the edible alliums more in hope than expectation; they don't do particularly well in our dry conditions.  I gave up growing onions - the sets tended to come out of the ground not much bigger than when they went in, and good onions are easy to come by - but have persevered with shallots and garlic (and leeks, but they were sown late this year and are still very small).  The shallots are always small, but that suits my cooking style, and I can live with small garlic bulbs.  Actually, this year's garlic (Early Purple Wight) has produced a couple of decent-sized heads, so I'm quite pleased with that.

The broad beans, now de-topped, have fewer blackfly, but the pesky critters are appearing everywhere - on the runner beans, the parsley, even some of the poppies.  A few borlotti beans have gone in, as have a couple of the plants from the second sowing of the courgettes.  In the greenhouse, the tomatoes and aubergines are in their growbags and doing well.

Earlier in the year, I took advantage of a non-windy day (we don't get many of those) to use up old weedkiller sitting around in the garage and sprayed the overgrown half of the veg plot.  I have finally started to clear the dead grasses from this, starting with a space for a rhubarb plant ('Timperley Early') bought during the winter and languishing in its little pot since then.  The existing rhubarb plants are very elderly, seriously overgrown and in poor soil, so this is by way of starting again.  The prompt to plant the rhubarb was actually the need to bury deceased wildlife, always a bit of a problem in shallow soil unless the dear departed is quite small.  I once had to bury a fully grown rabbit found dead on the front garden path, presumably left there by a fox as rabbits don't usually expire naturally outside people's front doors, even in the country.  My usual practice is to put them under a plant which isn't going to be moved for a very long time, so that they don't get dug up by accident (my squeamishness rather than respect for the creature, admittedly); the rabbit went under a hellebore at the side of the house, which responded by growing extremely well.  The soil in the rhubarb patch is relatively deep (a full spade's-depth), so it was a good spot to dispose of the latest carcasses - the remains of a pigeon found under the aquilegia on the edge of the patio, and a squirrel found under the big ash tree at the bottom of the garden.  I'm guessing that the pigeon may have been an old bird that chose the shelter of the plants as a place to die - pigeons do seek out a sheltered spot when their time is up - although there wasn't a great deal left apart from the wings by the time I found it under the leaves.  The squirrel is a bit of a mystery; it looked like a young one, and it was almost under the bottom fence, which would have been a strange place for a cat to have left it.  There was some dead wood from the ash tree nearby, so I suppose it's possible that the squirrel's weight brought down a rotten branch and it was killed in the fall (do squirrels ever fall out of trees?).  Anyway, both are now contributing to the fertility of the soil under the rhubarb plant, and I hope it thrives.

The raspberry suckers have started bearing fruit (they're always well ahead of the 'official' plants), and there are lots of gooseberries, mostly on the old plants that I haven't dug out yet.  My pruning of the plants I want to keep was obviously too severe; there are a few, nice big, fruits but not many.  The blackbirds are very partial to them but fortunately are focusing their attention on the smaller fruit, which are easier for them to get at; I picked one side of the bush while my friendly female blackbird picked the other side.  The newest blackcurrant bush has some lovely strings of fruit on it, so it has been fleeced up to keep the birds off.

The sunny and dry weather is to break down into rain from tomorrow - a chance to do some potting up and sowing in the greenhouse.  It has been a bit too hot in there to do much of that lately, although it has been ideal for drying off the bulbs lifted from the patio pots.