The wrong wildlife

Where wildlife is concerned, you need to be careful what you wish for.  As I’ve noted before, if you seek to attract wildlife to the garden, you can’t be too particular about what wildlife will turn up; you might create an ideal habitat for a hedgehog and end up with a rat instead.  Not quite what was intended; but that’s wildlife for you.

Woodworm work

Down at the far end of the veg patch, against the edge of the Dump, I have a line of part-rotten logs, originally intended as firewood but too old to be of use.  They partly fill the need for a dividing line between the two areas (the trellis that was originally there having long since fallen apart, you can see its remains at the top of the photo), and partly provide some ‘dead wood’ to attract insect life.  I was hoping for stag beetles, but instead I’ve got woodworm.  The other day I noticed that two of them had mostly disappeared in recent weeks, leaving not much more than the bark.  There were some woodworm holes, so it wasn’t too hard to work out what had happened.  Rotten wood is good for the hotbin; I broke some apart, to the requisite small size, and found a couple of fat white caterpillars, so I now know what woodworm larvae look like.  I would still rather have the stag beetles, which are at least endangered.  But the logs were put there to break down, so I can't complain. 

More puzzling is the apple conundrum.  We have a stash of cooking apples in the summerhouse, where they’re keeping quite well in the cool but protected conditions; I have cooked with a couple of them, but really they’re for feeding the blackbirds.  I’ve been putting them out on the patio one at a time, where they’re gratefully received by our blackbird pair.  One day last week I noticed that, although the apple had been fairly intact in the late afternoon, by the following morning it was gone.  Now, it’s not unusual for the birds to toss an apple into a corner, especially if there wasn’t much of the fruit left; pecking at the scant remains of an apple can cause it to wander off the patio, or a bird might deliberately take it away to eat it quietly out of sight.  But it’s unusual for a nearly whole apple to be moved away; these are big apples.  Anyway, I put a fresh one out; with the same result next day.  After a couple more days, I came to the conclusion that something was coming along in the night or early morning and making off with them.  I don’t know what; it would have to be a fairly large animal, with a big enough mouth to grasp the fruit.  A squirrel or rat wouldn’t be big enough, surely.  My money’s on a fox, and they do have a taste for fruit.  I’d rather save my apples for the blackbirds, so I’ve taken to covering the day’s apple with an empty flowerpot each evening and uncovering it again in the morning.  I hope the blackbirds appreciate the effort!

The 'right' wildlife, meanwhile, is busy doing what wildlife does in early spring.  The sparrows are holding moss-gathering parties, the robin is giving little presents of food to his mate and the pheasant is solicitously escorting his ladies as they pick up seeds under the feeders.  Lefty our elderly lame woodpigeon continues to come for his breakfast in the mornings, and has enjoyed a couple of leisurely soaks in the birdbath, lifting his wings one at a time to let the sun - and the warmth - get underneath, the very picture of contentment.

Lefty takes a bath

Multum in parvo

 

Oh dear ....

‘Multum in parvo’ – much in a little – seems to be the best description of the past few days’ gardening.  I keep finding a lot of (usually undesirable) things in too small a space, or I’m trying to fit a lot into cramped quarters.

There was a pot on the patio that was annoying me and needed tidying up.  It's a very small pot, containing a few Allium karataviense bulbs (one of which is the variety ‘Ivory Queen’, the rest the ordinary species, and the difference is apparent when they flower, but not too much).  An antirrhinum self-seeded in there a year or two (or three?) back, and the dead flower spikes weren’t doing anything for the look of the whole.  It wasn’t a particularly nice antirrhinum, a washed-out pink and yellow, and I wasn’t minded to keep it.  So, although it’s not a good time of year to be repotting alliums, I decided to tip the lot out and take a look. 

Oh dear.  The alliums were there, sprouting nicely, and so were a large number of what is almost certainly Allium nigrum, self-seeded from a nearby pot.  And the antirrhinum – or antirrhinums? – of course, and their roots were forming a dense, circling mass all round the lower part of the pot.  But there was also a foxglove, a small ivy plant and a bramble seedling, and a layer of moss across the top.  Rather a lot for a little pot.  I managed to remove the foxglove, ivy and bramble and much of the moss, and cut away a lot of the antirrhinum; but rather than disturb the Allium karataviense I decided to repot them, with the other alliums and some antirrhinum root, and do a full clean-up later in the year when the bulbs are dormant.

On the subject of bulbs, part of the clump of Galanthus elwesii, my earliest snowdrop, was dug up and some of the bulbs replanted into the ‘new’ bed by the patio, where they will be more easily seen; and more of them went into a pot, with the same end in mind.

There’s also a lot in our rather small pond.  It has needed clearing out for a long time, but when I noticed a blackbird hopping across the surface the other day I realised that something would have to be done.  Ok, it’s been dry recently, and the water level is low, but there is more weed, fallen leaves and mud in there than water.  It’s a job I’ve been putting off for far too long, and a messy one – but it needs doing!

The propagator - a lot in a small space!

Seed-sowing, under cover, has also been one of my recent jobs, and again it’s a matter of fitting as much as possible into as small a space as possible.  Tomato seeds have been brought indoors to germinate, but others are in the greenhouse: herbs, lettuce, peas, salad onions and salvia (blue clary) in the propagator, and lobelia and cosmos in a tray with glass on top (since they need light to germinate).  There are more seeds needing sowing, so more space will be needed!

The weather remained chilly, thanks to a north-easterly breeze, a few snow showers and a couple of slightly frosty nights, until the last couple of days when things have warmed up considerably, to the extent that today I found myself gardening in a long-sleeved T-shirt without any top layers and managed lunch on the bench outside.  However the forecasters have been warning of the possibility of an Arctic snap to come, so I haven’t been in too much of a hurry to plant seedlings out.  I’ll get the broad beans out of the cold frame and into the ground tomorrow, though; after some weeks of unseasonably dry weather, there is (finally) some rain forecast over the weekend, which should help establish them nicely.

A little more colour in the garden now: daffodils are slowly opening, primulas in sunny corners are blooming, and the little clump of Crocus angustifolius is making a colourful splash alongside the drive.

Back home

Home again after a month away, returning to a garden definitely more springlike than when we left.  We returned to a lovely warm weekend, with the wind from the south, but followed by a chilly few days with the wind coming from the north, including a couple of almost inevitable, but very brief, mid-March snowfalls.  The warm weather brought out some of the early insect life – a few bees and butterflies (a peacock, and a pair of brimstones).  The changeable weather doesn’t seem to have fazed the birds, who are busy pairing up and nesting (the sparrows in the ‘penthouse’ have nestlings already), and there is noticeably more birdsong than before we left; a thrush (mistle thrush?) was singing lustily in the holly tree the other day.  There was also a real rarity yesterday; a marsh tit has been around intermittently over the winter, and for the first time ever a pair of them turned up in the bushes.  I hope they nest somewhere near.

The snowdrops are going over, and the large daffodils not quite out yet, but the two tubs of miniatures are flowering brightly, as are the little ‘Tete-a-tete’s in the windowbox.  The potful of ‘Exotic Emperor’ tulips, now in their third year, is well in leaf (will they flower for a third time?); I left the annuals that were sown in there last year to self-seed, and one little marigold is already bravely peeping out from among the tulip leaves.

One little marigold

As always, there are jobs to be done.  Not only the usual big tasks at this time of year, such as pruning the apple tree and buddleja (and of course the weeding, or more precisely clearing of beds), but one-offs, such as the variegated euonymus by the pond.  This has always been an erratically shaped plant and increasingly encroached on by the lawn, and it always drops some leaves in the winter, but I’ve noticed that it’s looking decidedly thin; I wonder if it’s on the way out.  I’ve taken cuttings just in case; they’re usually fairly easy to propagate that way.

Looking decidedly thin

While we were away, a number of seed-trays and pots were left to take care of themselves in the cold frame, including the broad beans and sweet peas.  The former have germinated nicely, and survived any slug/snail/mouse attentions, and the weather was relatively kind for February, but the sweet peas aren’t showing anything much.  The beans should be planted out soon, but I’ll wait until the current cold snap is past before entrusting them to the veg plot.  There are also a number of sweet William plants ready to go out, but I’ll leave them for another couple of weeks; they’re fairly tough, but they might benefit from a little hardening off.  Likewise the rooted penstemon cuttings, which can be potted up towards the end of the month.

In the cold frame