Forty days and forty nights

 

Some primulas are flowering despite the rain!

The weather, as is well known, is a favourite topic of conversation among us Brits.  However, in a day or two we shall be 40 days into 2026, and the Met Office reports that it has rained every day this year in some parts of the south and south-west of the country.  Not far off the biblical ‘forty days and forty nights’ that supposedly triggered the Flood; although admittedly it hasn’t actually been raining all the time, it has been very wet and there is a lot of flooding in the usual (and some not-so-usual) places.  Our garden is pretty soggy.  There has been hardly any sun for days – just mist and dull drizzle.  Needless to say, there has been a lot of weather-related moaning going on!  To make matters worse, the forecast is for more of the same for most of the foreseeable future.  Apparently there’s a ‘blocking high’ over Scandinavia, which is keeping low-pressure systems over us (and other parts of Europe – parts of Spain and Portugal are also suffering and eastern Europe is very cold). 

With a long holiday coming up, I had been worrying about getting the apple tree pruned before it bursts into leaf.  However, last week there were a couple of isolated dry spells long enough to allow me to get out with the secateurs, loppers and pruning saw.  I even managed to do the wisteria (which didn’t take long) while I was at it.

The big apple tree had finally shed nearly all its fruit; there were a few rotten ones which I pulled off.  This year I shortened some of the branches leaning over the veg plot (so that I can get to the entrance without having to bend down too much!) and took out a large branch that was crowding the canopy on that side.  There were a few broken and crossing stems to remove, and I also managed to shorten some of the old water shoots that were heading heaven-wards, so that I could reach them in future years.  There are a couple of downward-facing branches that I would have liked to cut off – one is too close to other branches, and the other is low down and makes mowing of the lawn difficult – but I’ve left them for next year; photos here to remind me!

Two branches to remove next year!

Cordon fruit trees are supposed to be pruned in summer, but I’ve found that doing this when the trees are in full leaf (and fruiting) results in a lot of shoots being missed and therefore becoming too long.  Several of the cordons are a mess, with excessive growth outwards and upwards.  So I tackled them too, taking out some of the worst bits and trying not to cut out too much – the old saying about ‘growth follows the knife’ is true and particularly applicable to fruit trees; take away too many branches and you end up with lots of unwanted water shoots.  Again, more to do next year.

Rather a mess

Despite the dismal weather, late winter flowers are starting to emerge; the snowdrops are making a fine show, there are a few winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) and the odd primula that has self-seeded into corners, and a pot of yellow crocuses is starting to put on colour.  The tubs of little mixed daffodils – now several years old and still going strong – are in bud, just sitting the rain out and waiting for some sun to get going!

The first winter aconites (with snowdrop and cyclamen leaves)

First crocus

And I managed to produce a home-grown green salad (lettuce from the cold frame, lamb's lettuce and a few little beet leaves from the veg plot) this week - not bad for February.

The night visitors

Most days, before gardening, I take a look round the garden to see what’s happening and what needs doing – and occasionally find surprises. 

The weather has been wet most days over the past month; there have been a few dry interludes, but the soil is pretty soggy and sticky, making digging or clearing weeds difficult, and there has been limited opportunity for getting the bigger jobs, such as pruning the big apple tree, done.  I’ve managed a little clearing of old vegetation, some light cutting back and odd other jobs, but the ones that need a full good day outside are still pending.  While checking round the garden the other day, however, I spotted a couple of interesting, not to mention puzzling, things – we have had some nocturnal goings-on that I wasn’t aware of.

First, I checked over the windfall apples left out on the old table by the dining-room window, to remove the totally rotten ones and put a couple of sound(ish) fruit on the patio to give the birds a variety of places to feed.  Among the apples were three or four softish oval objects – owl pellets, I assume.  We have tawny owls around here – a female was calling nearby last night – but I didn’t realise that they visit so close to the house.  Owls regurgitate pellets containing the inedible bits of their prey; I broke one open and could see beetle wing-cases in there.  Fascinating.

Owl pellets

Then I took a look at the path by the long hedge. Not much needs attention there at the moment, given that the hedge was trimmed in the autumn and the prunings dropped on to a cardboard base to suppress weeds, so I hadn’t been along it for a while, but halfway down there’s a self-seeded hellebore which I tolerate, and the old leaves needed to be cut off.  The path, still well covered by bits of fresh evergreen conifer, is overhung by various shrubs and is quite secluded, so it’s not unusual to find evidence of wildlife having been there; foxes seem to like to take prey in there, and I’ve found remains of pheasants left behind by them.  I noticed clusters of droppings on the path – just a couple at first, and then on closer inspection quite a few; lots of roundish, fairly fresh droppings, each about pea-size.  My initial thought was that they had been left by a rat (an inevitable part of living in the country), but the quantity and size made that quite impossible – these had been left by a much larger animal.  Even a rabbit couldn’t have generated those.  After much cogitation, I can only think that we’ve had a deer in the garden.  There are roe and fallow deer in the vicinity, but I can’t imagine that they would come into a domestic garden – there’s plenty of secluded grazing for them in the fields and woods around here.  A close neighbour has had a muntjac in his garden, eating windfall apples in broad daylight, and that seems much more likely.  There’s no sign of it (or them) having eaten any plants (that I’ve noticed), so I don’t mind; I’m just rather surprised that it would venture so close to a house for no obvious reason!  I assume it visited at dusk or very early morning as I haven’t seen it.  A fox appears to have found it interesting too; there was fox poo beside one of the droppings piles, where the fox ‘made his mark’ to assert it was his territory.

Nocturnal droppings - deer (top), fox (bottom)

There are obviously several goings-on in the garden that are not apparent to the owners!