Coming and going

Daffodils - just going

There has been a lot of coming and going in the past few weeks, with a lot to do in the garden, plants fading and being overtaken by others and plenty of birds coming and going too. 

My comings and goings have been to do with trying to keep on top of the various garden jobs at this time of year: weeding, sowing, pricking out, potting on and, given how dry it has been, watering.  April, unusually, has been very dry: apart from the light snow showers earlier in the month, there has hardly been any precipitation here for weeks, and coming and going with the watering can has been necessary.

The weather this month has also been mostly sunny but an easterly wind has kept it decidedly on the chilly side.  The cool temperatures (low teens centigrade/below 60F most days) have kept the daffodils flowering for longer than usual, though they are now going over, at that stage where they provide welcome colour from a distance but, when viewed close to, are too obviously on the way out to be suitable for cutting for the house.  They are being superseded by the tulips.  The first of these to flower were the little red ones in the front garden, which came out in the last days of March, but the first of the tall ones were the ‘Couleur Cardinal’ which were planted out years ago into the end of the veg plot and have provided a vaseful of colour each year since.  They were closely followed by ‘Apricot Beauty’, a new variety for me (I’m trying to grow at least one new variety every year); it isn’t quite my idea of apricot, being quite pink without much of an orangey flush, but it is lovely.  ‘Exotic Emperor’ was next, an old favourite and always a cheerful early potful.  ‘Orange Emperor’ is also out, as is yellow ‘World Friendship’, and the two big pots with mixed varieties are just starting to come into flower.  

A vase of 'Couleur Cardinal'

'Apricot Beauty'

'Exotic Emperor'

Other colour is also starting to appear, especially around the summerhouse end of the path by the long hedge – doronicums, honesty (Lunaria annua) and a few of the red tulips that are dotted through the planting down there.

Path by the long hedge

On the wilder side, the cowslips in the lawn are coming into bloom, though the sparrows have been pecking at the flowers; and the unintended patch of them on the verge outside our drive is going from strength to strength.

Cowslips in the verge

If the gardener has been kept coming and going recently, that is even more true of the birds here.  A few of them have literally been coming or going, on migration.  ‘Going’, probably, were two male bramblings (a colourful finch which overwinters in the UK) spotted in the plum tree ten days or so ago, and another yesterday; I’ve seen bramblings here before, but they’re definitely unusual visitors for us, probably stopping off on their way back to Scandinavia for the summer.  My Scandinavian readers might be seeing them make landfall after crossing the North Sea soon!  ‘Coming’ were two male blackcaps, probably en route for somewhere more sheltered than our garden; we occasionally see them early or late in the season, again probably on passage, but they never seem to hang around.  I’ve also seen one house martin and D has seen swallows, so our summer visitors are gradually arriving.  I wonder what they’re making of the cold.

The resident birds are busy nesting and raising youngsters.  The blackbird family who were nesting in the hedge seem to have come to an unhappy end.  Dad had been feeding their one survivor from the first brood while Mum incubated the second, but one day we found little one cheeping forlornly for food, and a sad little pile of male blackbird feathers on the lawn.  We tried to put out food for youngster, but he wasn’t sufficiently advanced to sustain himself.  Mum took over feeding duties, even though she had started gathering small worms presumably for the next lot of nestlings, but little one hasn’t been seen for several days and Mum is no longer gathering food, so we assume that she has had to abandon her nest.  Another male has moved into her territory and she is mostly keeping out of his way.  Another possibly abandoned nest is our birdbox; blue tits had been going in and out, but one day they had a full-on, stand-up fight with a pair of great tits down there, and I haven’t seen any activity at all since then. 

On a more positive birdy note, Lefty the lame pigeon has been picking up nesting material with his mate, and at least two pairs of robins are actively taking food to their nests; one of them, presumably my friend from earlier in the year, has become quite tame, following me around when I’m weeding.  Another pair of robins spent one day busily taking nesting material into a hole in the neighbours’ garage fascia, but I haven’t seen them there since; either found somewhere better and moved on, or just being very low-key in their movements?  A young collared dove appeared in the apple tree today, and a wren has been paying visits to the greenhouse, probably in search of spiders (he’s welcome to any that he can find in there as long as he can find his way out again!).  And a rare visitor, a marsh tit, has found our fatball container and has paid at least a couple of visits to it; I hope he makes it a regular pitstop.