Lunch for one

Having reported last week on the breakfast-and-supper bird visitors, today's big sighting was more a case of lunch for one.  The local red kite, who cruises by occasionally to check whether the neighbours' cat has left any dead mice on their lawn (then comes down and eats them if so), did a fly-past and came to rest in the big ash tree at the bottom of the garden.  He had brought his packed lunch with him and proceeded to tuck in; I couldn't see what he was eating, probably part of a pheasant.  Unfortunately he must have sensed he was being watched, as he kept looking round uneasily and after only a minute or so decided to take his meal elsewhere.  We don't usually have the opportunity to view the kites so clearly; although they do sometimes hunt low, we rarely see them at rest.

He was too late to be counted as part of the Big Garden Birdwatch.  I did two Birdwatches, to see which one gave the best results.  Friday's count, in good weather, was ok, but entirely of our usual birds, the ones we could rely on seeing day in day out, with perhaps the addition of the wren spotted skulking in the undergrowth, and a couple of chaffinches.  Today I tried again; after several relatively mild days the night had been cold and, although we didn't realise at the time, snow showers were on the way (not forecast!), which might have encouraged the birds to come down to feed quickly.  The count was just as good as Friday's, including the wren and chaffinches, and in addition we had a goldfinch, fieldfare and the little family of long-tailed tits, the latter all piling together onto the peanut container in a flurry of long tails sticking out at all angles.  All duly counted and submitted to the RSPB.  Job done for another year.

The snow didn't lie, and at the moment there is no more in the forecast - but it's hard to tell as the forecast seems to change daily just now!

Breakfast-and-supper club

A modest dump of snow – about 3in/7cm – on Saturday night, followed by two days with only minimal thaw, brought the birds flocking in to be fed.  We have a good number of regulars in any case, coming every day for breakfast and again in the afternoon in preparation for the night, but other birds have come in from the fields looking for a quick meal on the patio and round the apple tree, where there are still the last fruits hanging on the branches.  (Not much left now!)

Lefty and robin have breakfast

Lefty, the woodpigeon with the damaged left leg, has recently started to turn up regularly in the mornings for his breakfast (breadcrumbs, usually); this morning he was waiting in sight of the upstairs landing window, watching for us coming down.  We had cleared the snow off an area of the patio yesterday to allow the birds to feed, and he waited there for us; however he’s very nervous of our approach, and flies off when we open the patio doors to throw food out.  It doesn’t take him long to come back, though.

Fieldfare (at the back) creeping up on the blackbirds ....

There are always a few blackbirds around, but today we’ve had about six squabbling over the apples (I’ve left a few windfalls on the patio and under the buddleja, where the snow had only landed lightly and quickly melted, and it’s a sheltered feeding site for them).  Whereas we usually only have one fieldfare down, today there were three, fighting each other and the blackbirds.  Another, very welcome, sighting was a little posse of chaffinches – three males and two females – sitting under the peanut container and picking up the bits dropped by the woodpecker and starlings; finches have been in decline here for some years and it’s always good to see them around.  I haven’t seen a greenfinch all winter, although a goldfinch dropped by a couple of weeks ago in search of old flower seedheads.  Other welcome visitors include the long-tailed tit family, who sometimes turn up at the fatball container at their supper-time.

The sparrows already have nesting in mind, with mating fights going on and several birds starting to take strands of grass into the nest sites under the roof.  The patio robin, another regular breakfaster, is in an uneasy relationship with another robin; sometimes they’re friends and sometimes not.  Today, not.  I’m never sure which robin is which.  The veg patch/bottom of the garden robin seems to have a friend; they’ve been seen in each other’s company a couple of times without any fighting.  I wonder whether it’s the same very trusting robin that was there last year; he (or she) has again been following me around when I’m working in the veg plot.  Last week I spent some time weeding the ‘long edge’ bed and some of the paths, with the almost constant quiet chattering of the robin close by; he did come down to pick up worms where I had turned the soil, but he seemed more interested in following me about, and sometimes I think he just wanted the company.

There have been fewer of our less-regular visitors around.  Blue tits occasionally come by, but I’ve only seen one great tit for some weeks, and today’s coal tit was the first I’d seen this year.  A wren was over by the veg plot wall the other day, and a pied wagtail was sitting on the guttering, but it’s been a while since I saw a bullfinch or song thrush, for example.  Next weekend is the Big Garden Birdwatch; it would be nice to have a good variety of birds appear in the garden!

Lead us not into temptation

 

The seed catalogues arrived before the old year was out.  Fortunately I’m on the mailing list of only a couple of companies, plus a couple more online, and temptation was limited by the fact that I had already ordered and received my seeds (from Dobies) in the autumn.  I was very good this year and didn’t get too carried away with the size of my order (though I still have a lot of seeds to sow!).  Last year I sowed way too many seeds, especially of flowering plants, and ended up throwing a lot of them away – but that’s maybe a story for another blog post.

Seed temptation

However I did have a rueful laugh at myself while reading Jack Wallington’s recent blog post (My self-help guide to resisting seed and plant catalogue order overload | Jack Wallington Garden Design Ltd. - Clapham in London) about the dangers of the seed catalogues.  Oh yes, Jack, and me too.  The big problem with the mid-winter catalogues is that they include the dahlia tubers.  Now that is – for me, as well as for Jack – a serious temptation.

Dahlia temptation ('David Howard' bottom left)

I came relatively late to dahlias, but they have become the mainstay of my late summer garden.  They can be left in the ground over winter, with sufficient protection, but I’ve always dug them up and overwintered them under cover, mostly because I don’t have a dedicated place for them in the garden and I like to be able to move them from one spot – or from one pot – to another from year to year.  They do take up quite a lot of space – some dahlias can get quite big – and they need sun, which isn’t in plentiful supply in my plot.  They’re also quite time-consuming; digging them up, drying them off, shaking off the soil, storing them, planting them up, hardening them off and then putting them outside again is a bit of a rigmarole.  I have four varieties (the dark red single ‘Bishop of Auckland’, even darker red ‘Sam Hopkins’, purple ‘Ambition’ and the giant cream ‘Café au Lait’), and several tubers of each as they divide naturally after a while in storage; plus my collection of seed-grown ‘Bishop’s Children’, offspring of dahlias in the Bishop series; they don’t come true from seed, but they all share the Bishops’ open, single flowers and dark foliage.  That’s quite a lot of dahlias, and I don’t need (or have space for) any more.

But then the Sarah Raven catalogue comes…. and it’s my downfall, as well as Jack’s.

I have resisted for the past couple of years.  My last acquisition, ‘Dark Butterfly’, died on me without flowering a few years back, which dented my enthusiasm, and the labour-intensiveness of them also put me off adding to my collection.  However I’m thinking of finding a place for at least some of them in the veg plot, and leaving them there next winter, which will reduce the workload; and then I received a letter from Sarah Raven (not from her personally, you understand, but from the company).  They’ve had a spot of bother with their transfer to a new warehouse which has affected deliveries, and in compensation they would like to offer me (and thousands of others, no doubt) a £10 voucher.

Well, it would seem churlish to decline, wouldn’t it?  This is a good year to order more dahlias, I tell myself; mail-order dahlias are sent out in February, when we’re usually away on holiday, but this winter all travel is stopped by the virus, and we shall be here to take delivery of them and ensure that they don’t spend time sitting around somewhere inappropriate waiting for our return.  Dahlias will be some compensation for not skiing this year.

So, what to choose?  One advantage of the Sarah Raven catalogue – and here I’m being quite serious – is that they sell dahlia tubers singly, whereas most companies sell them in packs of three or even five (and if I have trouble finding space for more, finding space for three or five is an even bigger problem).  I forced myself to go for only two, and spend the rest of the £10 (ok, and a bit more, and plus p&p of course) on a pack of Lilium regale, for a potful of scent on the patio earlier in the summer.

As I’ve already said more than once in this blog, I’ve particularly enjoyed my Bishop’s Children this year, and the colour mix – mostly red and orange – has been given some real zing by the inclusion of two with pinkish flowers.  Those two plants died back earlier than the others, and the tubers, when dug up, turned out to be on the small side, so I’m not sure whether they will survive.  They looked like offspring of pink ‘Bishop of Canterbury’, so I’ve gone for a tuber of the real ‘B of C’ to be sure of keeping the colour mix in the garden.  For the other, I’ve ordered the classic orange ‘David Howard’, whom I’ve had my eye on for a while; he also has well-coloured foliage, bronze rather than the bishops’ purplish tone.

All I have to do now is find room for them … and hope that they don’t send another voucher next year....

More temptation ....

New Year jobs

 

Frost on Viburnum davidii

New Year, and still so much to do.  There has been a further dusting of snow and the temperature has barely risen above freezing, so outdoors has been too frosty and icy to do much.  The greenhouse still hasn’t been cleared out and washed down, so it remains un-insulated despite the cold; several nights have been a few degrees below zero and the temperature in the greenhouse has fallen to just above freezing, but I’m trying to resist turning on the heater unless absolutely necessary.  Nothing seems to be suffering too much in there at the moment.

A priority job has been to get the last dahlia tubers out of their pots – one had been sitting, pot and all, in the greenhouse, and two more out in the cold – and replaced with the last few tulip bulbs.  My good intention had been to give all the potted bulbs fresh compost, but given the renewed lockdown and last year’s compost shortage I’m concerned about not having enough, so they have got a layer of new stuff above and below them, with old compost at the top (some 6X fertiliser mixed in if they were lucky).  The two very big pots have mixed tulips: the one by the summerhouse has the doubles ‘Angelique’, ‘Uncle Tom’ and ‘Black Hero’, and the one on the patio has ‘Ballerina’, ‘Antraciet’ and a purple tulip whose name I’ve forgotten (!).  The other tulips are planted one variety only in each pot, with no other accompanying bulbs or plants; this should mean that I can discard them (at least, those that don’t flower a second year) as soon as they’ve finished flowering, without having to wait for other plants to go over.  I’ve even planted the crocuses separately in little pots; this seemed a good idea at the time, but I now realise that this leaves them vulnerable to being dug up and eaten by mice (as has happened).  In the big pots, above the tulips, they’re safe; the mice can’t climb so high!  Some of the crocus pots are now in the greenhouse and some in the cold frame, but even there they’re not completely safe.  Something has been digging into the snowdrop pots in the cold frame, and it looks like mouse work - although I can't see how the mouse would get in there.

I have spent some time clearing soil off the dahlia tubers.  Those that were in the ground had been dug up in wet conditions and had a lot of claggy soil stuck to them; this has mostly dried now and is easier to remove.  There was some microlife and the odd worm in the soil; I dumped it outside on one of the borders, to the great delight of the robin and the sparrows, the latter using it as a dust-bath when the birdbaths were frozen.

Another job has been to shell the beans that I hung up in the greenhouse to dry off, in the hope of getting beans to sow this summer.  I had been afraid that the greenhouse was too damp for this (the roof leaks in heavy rain), and I was also concerned that I wouldn’t be able to tell one variety from another; I hadn’t labelled them, failing to realise that the pods wouldn’t be easily distinguishable once they had dried and shrivelled.  I needn’t have worried.  There was a decent number of good-quality beans from each set, and they were easily identifiable: the haricot-like ones were from the runner bean (variety unknown) given to me last summer by a neighbour; the brown mottled ones were borlotti beans; and the handsome black-and-pink ones were the climbing purple French bean ‘Blauhilde’.  More than enough to sow.

Beans, top - runners; middle - Blauhilde; bottom: borlottis

 

Today the thaw has started; temperatures will rise this week and it will rain.  I took the opportunity of making a start on pruning the roses; still several of the big ones to do!

The snow prevented me from doing a New Year’s Day tally of plant varieties in flower in the garden.  Early the following week, when the snow had fallen off most of the plants and I could see what was and what wasn’t flowering, I managed a total of ten.  The usual winter shrubs, of course: winter honeysuckle, winter jasmine, Mahonia ‘Winter Sun’ and two viburnums (which only count as one variety); the big hellebore in the front garden was starting to bloom (the others still in bud); and the toughies: one flower on the Centaurea montana, one Allium triquetrum, some alpine strawberries and meadow grass.  And the first snowdrops of the year, the Galanthus elwesii near the pond – the first real sign of spring in the garden!