Interlopers

Tulips in the big pot

The mid-season tulips are coming out nicely; but I admit to being a bit confused about the contents of the big pot.  According to my blog post at the time, it ought to be 'Ronaldo', 'La Belle Epoque', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Bruine Wimpel'.  Certainly the first two of those are there; 'Ronaldo' a very deep, dark pink, and 'La Belle Epoque' the sort of pinky-coffee colour that would look washed out on its own, but teamed with stronger colours looks really great.  There's also a strong pink with orangey, slightly frilled tips, and it doesn't match the description of either of the other two that I planted.  It might become clearer once the fourth flowers; it's going to come into bloom later than the others and so far looks orange-ish on the outside, so it could be either 'Brown Sugar' or 'Bruine Wimpel' at this stage.  Fortunately, the overall effect is quite striking and I'm pleased with it, whatever the actual tulips turn out to be!  There was also an interloper in that pot; one single bloom that was too early, too tall and too orange for the others.  I cut it for a vase indoors, and I'm pretty sure it's 'Cairo': a handsome orange with a strong central rib on the petals and a khaki-green base inside.  As it happens, I have a group of 'Cairo' from last year so I've been able to compare the two.  I've marked the interloper in the hope of being able to single it out for next year!

Definitely 'Cairo' ....

... and possibly 'Cairo'

Eggplant?

Today there was another surprise appearance in the pot with the remains of Tulip 'Silver Parrot' (last year's bulbs; this year only one flowered, and poorly, so I'll discard them).  Something has laid an egg in there.  From the size, I'd guess it's one of the hen pheasants who have been wandering about over the last few days.  It's hardly a suitable place for a nest, so presumably it's just been abandoned.  At least she chose a pot where the planting is already fading, rather than squashing a lot of flowering bulbs.

Sadly, the bluetits may have abandoned their attempt to nest in the nestbox; possibly too much activity down there for them.  I haven't seen them going in for a while.  I hope they've found somewhere else.  However the house martins and swallows have started to arrive; a flock of martins were feeding over the field behind us one day, and singletons have been seen overhead.  The blackbirds, thrushes and robins have been having a wonderful week with all the landscaping work going on around the house.  The digging has yielded lots of worms and other buglife, and our soft-hearted builders have been putting the worms aside for the birds, who are becoming quite tame, especially as they're feeding youngsters now.  There's a fledgeling blackbird being fed alongside the drive, and I was scolded one day by the thrush when I went into the Dump corner, not realising that a young thrush was hiding in there.  One of our male blackbirds has, after much practice, managed to master the art of hanging onto the fatball feeder; it's not a very elegant performance, but he's able to stay on there for several seconds now and peck some beakfuls out.

The building work has limited the scope for much other gardening this past week; I've been clearing and cutting back to make space for the new paths.  The builders kindly lifted some of my favourite hellebores from the path, which have been bedded in temporarily to recover until I can find somewhere permanent for them.  I'm still planning the new bed behind the house; today (nice and sunny, but cool) that area wasn't shaded by the house until about 3pm, and the definition of 'full sun' is 6 hours of sunshine, so it should be suitable for quite a range of plants.

The veg plot has been a bit neglected over the past couple of weeks.  There are various brassica seedlings in the cold frame and greenhouse but they need pricking out and hardening off; the weather continues mostly dry, sometimes bright but with more cold winds and chilly nights than I'd like at this time of year.  The leek seedlings are starting to appear, but the spring-sown broad beans are patchy at best; I wonder if some of them have been eaten by mice.  There's just time to sow some replacements if I'm quick about it.