Tulip time

 

Tulip 'Exotic Emperor'

As the daffodils fade, it’s the turn of the tulips to take centre stage.  One of my favourite flowers: lovely colours, often a lovely shape, with a glowing sheen on the petals and a habit of fading gracefully, like old silk.  Not that there are too many in the garden this year; I deliberately only bought five varieties last winter, which I couldn’t plant out (in pots) until February because of the freezing weather earlier in the winter.  Unsurprisingly, they’re coming up late and in so-so condition.  The ‘Exotic Emperor’s, an early variety, are just coming into bloom, whereas a long-standing clump of dark red tulips, which I think are ‘Couleur Cardinal’, planted down the far end of the vegetable patch, has been flowering for a couple of weeks.  Some of them are in a vase indoors, but there are still some uncut.  (There’s also a paler tulip in that group, and I don’t know what it is - 'Angelique'?) 

Tulip 'Couleur Cardinal' - and one interloper!

The first tulips in flower were the little red ones in the (overgrown) shady border by the summerhouse.  There are also some pale orange species tulips in that bed, but they flower much later.  Nearby, in the bottom bed, there are a few ‘Menton’ in bud, and a single dark purple ‘Havran’, the last survivor of a previous planting.  Another singleton is ‘Sweetheart’ in the front garden; all the others have disappeared, which is a pity as it’s a pretty tulip. 

Early red tulips

A solitary Tulip 'Havran'

The ’bottom of the veg patch’ tulips are being encroached on by the lily of the valley, which has spread in under the wall from next door’s garden.  It too is nearly in flower; we don’t usually manage flowers to pick in time for May Day, though I can normally make a posy of them not long after.  This spring’s miserable temperatures (today is typical, cold and wet) don’t seem to have dampened their spirits too much; there are buds already.

Lily of the Valley (Convallaria majalis)

There was one good gardening day this week, almost (but not quite) mild enough to work outside without a jacket, and I got some weeding in the vegetable beds done.  The robin – or more than one, I’m never sure how many we have in the garden! – was very interested, coming up close on more than one occasion to look for worms and grubs.  This one seems to have a nest in the ivy by the rowan tree, where he (or she) keeps taking food.  There is a pecking order, however, and a blackbird pair seem higher up in it than the robin; they too were foraging around when I was out of the way, and the robin had to hang back until they were finished.  (Perhaps that was encouraging the robin to come close to me while I was working, as the blackbirds are not as trusting and he could get first pickings that way.)  The blackbirds – they seem to be a different pair to the patio blackbirds, with territory on the other side of the garden – must have started their nesting very early, as today they were being followed by two quite well-grown youngsters looking for food.  The patio blackbird, meanwhile, has been singing from the top of the neighbours’ roof, in competition with the song thrush, who sings from the top of the hawthorn tree!  It’s all go round here.

Other birdlife has included a pair of bullfinches, nibbling at the plum tree shoots, and a warbler.  The two partridges are still intermittently about in the garden; I try not to disturb them, though they’re fairly tolerant of my presence (at a respectful distance). 

Tulip time coincides with dandelion time; one of my daily jobs at the moment is to go round the garden trying to weed out as many dandelions as I can see before they seed.  They have considerable wildlife value, attracting hoverflies, but I have no compunction about removing them from the garden as there are hundreds, if not thousands, in the roadside verges and fields round here.  While digging one out from the edges of the shady summerhouse border, I disturbed two little fieldmice, which scooted away into the undergrowth from their hiding-place.  The most notable visitor to the garden this week, however, was a large dog fox which wandered across the patio and off down the garden one day at breakfast time.  Probably the same one as raided a neighbour’s chickens later in the week.

First cut

 

The lawn, cut - except for the cowslip patch

After the rain, we had three dry days over the Easter weekend, and managed the first cut of the lawn on Sunday.  The forecast was for a lovely sunny day, which didn’t materialise (cloud all day!), but the grass was dry enough for a high cut.  It’s amazing how much better the garden looks with the grass trimmed to a more manageable height.  The cowslips have been left, as they’re starting to flower, but we mowed over the top of the orchid leaves, which didn’t affect them but kept the surrounding vegetation low. 

The birds were very appreciative, as the cut made it easier for them to see the worms and insect life, as well as food dropped from the various bird feeders.  The blackbirds have started gathering food for their nestlings, while the robins are still at the stage of the male giving little food presents to his mate (as an indication of how he will provide for her when she’s on the nest).  Two song thrushes have been about – maybe a pair, maybe not – and are also collecting worms.  Other birds are busily collecting moss (the cowslip patch is a favourite spot for the sparrows) and other materials for their nests; the pair of mistle thrushes have been spotted gathering nest material, and a longtailed tit came to the kitchen window one day in search of spiders’ webs with the same intent.  Both blue and great tits have been checking out the nestbox, but don’t seem to have staked a claim yet.

Other birds have been showing up, in search of food, water or shelter.  A yellowhammer was at the bottom of the garden one day, doing his ‘little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheeeese’ song; a small warbler came by another day, a pair of bullfinches have been eating the buds on the plum tree and a pair of greenfinches seemed to be attracted by the bathing opportunities in the pond.  We even had a marsh tit on the peanut feeder.  And a swallow flew overhead on Sunday, the first of the year.  The pair of partridges have been hanging out regularly, mostly in and around the veg patch.  They can’t do much damage there at the moment; the broad beans are under fleece for protection from the squirrel, and the garlic and shallots are sprouted far enough to be fairly immune to disturbance.  Other crops are still at the seedling stage in the greenhouse.  One of the partridges was hiding under the big gooseberry bush one day, watching me in the greenhouse before being joined by his mate, but their favourite place is on a weedy veg bed, where they can nibble the weeds; this bed is currently occupied by the frame of a cloche that has lost its cover but contains a bit of rigid plastic netting (used to protect the radicchio from pigeons last autumn), and the partridges seem to regard it as a place of safety as well as warmth when the sun is out. 

One partridge, peeping out ....

... and with its mate ...

... and in their favourite shelter

Warmth and sun are going to be in short supply for a few days; we’re now having showers, heavy rain and some very blustery winds.

While the grass clippings were fresh, I took the opportunity to restart the Hotbin.  This has been a Coldbin over the winter; it reached good temperatures last summer, but when we were away in the autumn it cooled down (it requires regular feeding to stay hot) and I left it alone during the colder months.  The contents were rather half-composted but satisfyingly full of worms (how do they get into an insulated container?), and will be gradually fed back into the bin in the hope that they will provide some starter material.  The grass clippings, with some buddleja prunings, got the bin off to a good start; the temperature rose overnight from 10C to over 40C (110F), but has dropped again as the composting process started and the volume went down (the bin needs a certain volume of waste to work properly).  I’m hoping I can get it working rather better this year.

In the weedy end of the row of fruit cordons, I found seven stems of Narcissus ‘Silver Chimes’ about to bloom.  I planted these some years back with the intention of cutting them for the house, and was very pleased with them, but after the first year they seemed to disappear; they have now presumably bulked up again.  I cut them, with some of the nearby pulmonaria, for a posy for the dining room table; they’re lovely little flowers, highly scented and very pretty.  I must consider moving the bulbs to a better spot.

'Silver Chimes' with pulmonaria

No way to treat a hedychium

Much of the weather recently has varied from drizzly to downright wet, discouraging me from getting on with bigger jobs like cutting the buddleja back.  There’s no real excuse not to do work in the greenhouse, however.

The greenhouse needs a good clear-out; much of the space is occupied by used plastic flowerpots and old compost sacks, but under the staging in the far corner is where the hedychiums have been sitting.  Hedychiums are ornamental gingers, known also as the ginger lily, and they have big exotic leaves and spikes of highly scented flowers.  They like heat and moisture and, like dahlias, in the UK they will overwinter in the ground in sheltered locations if well mulched, but in colder spots are better brought under cover and kept dryish and frost-free.  Last spring I split them and potted up seven pieces in new compost, but my good intentions with them didn’t last; they each produced one or more leaf-spikes but my watering regime was lacklustre to put it mildly, even during the summer heatwave, and they had to endure searing temperatures in the greenhouse; in autumn one of the flower-spikes started to bloom, rather half-heartedly, but finally petered out.  The greenhouse was neither heated nor insulated over the winter, and the temperature dropped to -3C at one point, which is definitely on the low side.  It’s no way to treat a hedychium.

Hedychium about to flower last autumn - or not ....

Last week I bit the bullet and emptied them out of their pots to see what the damage was.  Less than might have been expected, actually.  Some of the tubers had put their roots down through the bottom of the pots and into the builders’ gravel that the pots had been standing on, and that seemed to have kept them going.  A couple of the potfuls looked beyond saving, but some of the others either seemed to have tubers with some vestiges of life in them, or roots that were still viable, and these were potted up again with fresh compost.  We’ll see.

The dahlias were also examined.  These were outdoors in various pots when the weather turned cold early last winter, rather suddenly, and I brought anything that could be put under cover into the greenhouse as quickly as possible.  One pot had been hastily housed outdoors under a table and predictably the tubers were now rotted away; some of the smaller tubers in the greenhouse were either dried out or worm-eaten, but I managed to salvage a reasonable range of varieties and potted them up.  Again, fingers crossed; ‘Sam Hopkins’ already has new shoots coming.

Alongside the dahlias and hedychiums I found a pot of freesia bulbs that did nothing at all last year and had been subjected to the same lack of summer watering and freezing winter temperatures as the tubers.  I picked the pot up and was about to empty the contents out to recycle the compost when I noticed a few shoots poking through.  I left well alone, watered it and put it with the other pots to be fed and watered in the coming weeks.  You never know …