Dry days

So far, spring has been pretty dry, thanks to a chilly east wind that's keeping rainy North Atlantic weather at bay.  Some light rain is forecast for Sunday (bound to happen, it’s a Bank Holiday weekend) but it remains to be seen whether it makes much difference.  There’s no rain in the forecast after that.

The plants in the ground are managing, but all my little pots, mostly cuttings taken a couple of years ago, are looking rather dry.  There are some that are only fit for the compost heap, while others are getting by with the occasional spell sitting in a basin of water.  The cuttings were taken to keep my garden stocks going – some, such as Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’, are short-lived and need regular replacing – with the surplus destined for the village plant sale; but the pandemic has meant that there has been no plant sale in the past two years, leaving me with too many plants.  I don’t feel too bad about throwing the runts away, although a few can be rescued, re-potted and grown on, and given to this year’s sale in late May.

Among the cuttings are two from the cistus that formerly grew near the gas tank.  That area has become overrun with weeds, mostly ground elder; the cistus itself grew too large and lanky (and cistus don’t take kindly to pruning), and finally the cold winter a couple of years back scorched it into a miserable thing.  I took cuttings (learning the hard way that you need to wait until after it has flowered to do this successfully) and pulled the remains of the parent plant up.  The ground elder is still there, in ground that is too stony and hard for digging so can only be weeded by hand, waiting for me to have a lot of spare time (ha!) to tackle it.  My two little cuttings, meanwhile, are in good shape but I’m unwilling to pot them on; I need to keep the rootballs small so that they can go into this poor soil (not possible to excavate too large a planting hole).  Hmmm.

Cowslip patch in bloom

There’s a fair bit of colour in the garden at the moment, with the cowslip patch in full bloom and rocket flowering along the long hedge path.  Down at the bottom of the garden, the alliums are about to flower.

Alliums about to open

Indoors, the tomatoes and courgettes are germinating.  I sowed seeds of five tomato varieties, cherry tomatoes ‘Apero’ and ‘Cherrola’, beefsteak ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’, and old stalwarts ‘Gardener’s Delight’ and ‘Harzfeuer’; the latter two are very old seeds, and I sowed a whole row of ‘Gardener’s Delight’ thinking that hardly any would germinate, but some have indeed come up, as has one ‘Harzfeuer’.  Too many plants, but I can gain some brownie points around the village by giving away the surplus.

Tomato seedlings - 'Gardener's Delight' just showing!

The dry soil is also making things difficult for the blackbirds, who are feeding little ones but aren’t able to find many worms.  We still have the last few of last year’s apples, now at least partly rotten, which we’re putting out gradually to give them some easy food to tide them over until the gooseberries come along.  The apples are being left out for them in one of the large flowerpots on the patio, now empty of plants but with a good depth of compost, to keep them accessible to birds but inaccessible to four-legged garden visitors (principally the rat that was visiting a few weeks back; it may or may not be the one found dead in the garden the other week, but we’re not taking chances).  Mum blackbird seems to be back on the nest, but Dad is feeding the two fledgelings from the first brood and making great use of the apples.  The robins are also not averse to stealing a beakful or two when the blackbirds aren’t around (and sometimes when they are around!).

Dad blackbird feeding apple to his youngsters

A very unusual sighting this past week, when a lovely male siskin, all bright green and yellow, briefly stopped by the bird bath for a drink.

Busy Busy Busy

We’ve had a real mix of weather this month – a ‘blackthorn winter’, with cold days and frosty nights, and a warm and sunny Easter weekend; currently cloudy with a chilly easterly wind.  But overall it has been mostly dry, and often pleasant enough for gardening; being busy in the garden, I haven’t had much time for posting here, so there’s plenty to catch up on.

'Couleur Cardinal' tulips

The daffodils are now starting to go over, and the tulips are beginning to flower.  With one thing and another last autumn, I didn’t get round to planting any new tulips – in any case we had been planning to be away in May, and it didn’t seem worthwhile having tulips when we weren’t going to be here to see them – but the ones in the corner of the veg plot have done well, especially T. ‘Couleur Cardinal’, which seem to be multiplying year-on-year.  They made a nice vaseful in the house.  The mixed tulips planted for last year’s display in the big pot by the summerhouse have at least partly survived, despite large portions of the pot having cracked in the frost and fallen out, exposing the roots; they haven’t quite flowered yet, so I can’t identify which varieties they are, but if they’re going to be good at persisting from one year to another, I’ll find a spot for them for cutting in future years.

Most of the late winter/early spring jobs have been done.  The apple tree has been pruned, except for a few high branches that I can’t reach; they’re a job for another year, as I’ve already taken out some big branches and daren’t take these out too.  The buddleja has only just been pruned.  It was a complex job.  Last year the plant was knocked around by various gales, snapping some branches and leaving others leaning into the plant at odd angles; and the relatively mild spring has caused a lot of shoots to grow quite tall.  Getting at the old broken stems and removing them without damaging the new ones took a fair bit of time.  This year I’ve cut up the thin prunings for composting in the Hotbin, which I’ve just restarted (it went cold last autumn and my inability to bend down meant that I couldn’t empty it to get it going again until recently).  The bin is again firing on all cylinders, and the half-composted material from last year has been used, under black polythene, to suppress weeds by the edge of the patio. 

I’m rather later than usual in sowing seeds; tomatoes and courgettes are only just sown, and ornamentals and most vegetables are still awaiting attention.

The lawn has been cut a couple of times, avoiding the large (and growing) patch of cowslips, and an increasing number of orchids.

I’m not the only one who has been busy around here.  Nesting is in full swing.  A pair of robins have been busily taking nesting material into a crack in the neighbours’ garage roof, as seen from our kitchen window, and a blackbird was gathering grass to take into the thick ivy round the base of the electricity pole by the drive entrance – she looked rather like a flying haystack.  A song thrush collected moss from near the pond, and I think took it into the hedge by the holly tree; she occasionally appears round the edge of the lawn to feed.  There are two male wrens down at the bottom of the garden, singing furiously at each other, so there are probably a couple of nests down there too.  During the warm Easter weekend we were able to eat in the summerhouse, to the apparent consternation of a couple of great tits who came to sit in the hawthorn tree, staring at us through the window; they occasionally had nesting material with them, and seemed interested in the nest box but unable to pluck up the courage to use it.  I hope they’ve found somewhere in the ivy-covered damson thicket a little further along the fenceline.

Our patio blackbirds are being very grateful for the partly-rotten apples that we’re still putting out for them; they nested early and are feeding little ones.  Yesterday two youngsters broke cover and followed Mum to the patio for food; today Mum is back on nest-building duties, collecting a huge beakful of grass and moss and taking it towards the hedge, for the next brood.

Despite our best endeavours, starlings appear to have found a gap high up in the north gable and are nesting there; we blocked up their previous entrance, but they are persistent.  They’re messy neighbours, although now that the ash tree has gone their flight-path out of the nest seems to have changed so that their droppings now fall further away from the drive. 

A couple of nest-related mysteries.  A male sparrow was found flying around inside the (locked) porch one day.  How did it get in?  One had been sitting on the porch guttering the previous day, and I’d guess that it tried to find a nesting site in the porch roof; there must be a crack through to the interior somewhere.  The other nest mystery wasn’t a bird, though we’re not sure who was responsible.  There are a few neat round holes in the grass at the edge of the path – there’s a photo in a previous 2020 post – which are probably being used by a small rodent or bees, but one day a fragment of green tarpaulin was found wedged down one of the holes.  By whom?  We left it in situ for a few days, but had to remove it to mow the lawn and didn’t put it back.  I hope whoever put it there didn’t mind.

Tarpaulin in the hole

Four-legged visitors are also around.  One day I went to inspect the little fig tree by the wall (flourishing), and suddenly noticed a rat near my feet.  It was among some old buddleja prunings, stacked there out of the way, and appeared to be asleep, but further tentative investigations showed it to be dead.  I expect it didn’t feel well, tucked itself into a safe place and just fell asleep.   Fortunately the ground round there is stony but diggable, so a fairly deep grave was excavated and it was quickly tipped in.  Definitely alive, on the other hand, was a stoat that was very briefly spotted yesterday running along the wall from the woodstore to the gas tank.

Indoors, a friend brought a bunch of roses, which are brightening up the dining table.  I don’t grow hybrid teas myself, but they do have the most perfect blooms!