Interlopers

Tulips in the big pot

The mid-season tulips are coming out nicely; but I admit to being a bit confused about the contents of the big pot.  According to my blog post at the time, it ought to be 'Ronaldo', 'La Belle Epoque', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Bruine Wimpel'.  Certainly the first two of those are there; 'Ronaldo' a very deep, dark pink, and 'La Belle Epoque' the sort of pinky-coffee colour that would look washed out on its own, but teamed with stronger colours looks really great.  There's also a strong pink with orangey, slightly frilled tips, and it doesn't match the description of either of the other two that I planted.  It might become clearer once the fourth flowers; it's going to come into bloom later than the others and so far looks orange-ish on the outside, so it could be either 'Brown Sugar' or 'Bruine Wimpel' at this stage.  Fortunately, the overall effect is quite striking and I'm pleased with it, whatever the actual tulips turn out to be!  There was also an interloper in that pot; one single bloom that was too early, too tall and too orange for the others.  I cut it for a vase indoors, and I'm pretty sure it's 'Cairo': a handsome orange with a strong central rib on the petals and a khaki-green base inside.  As it happens, I have a group of 'Cairo' from last year so I've been able to compare the two.  I've marked the interloper in the hope of being able to single it out for next year!

Definitely 'Cairo' ....

... and possibly 'Cairo'

Eggplant?

Today there was another surprise appearance in the pot with the remains of Tulip 'Silver Parrot' (last year's bulbs; this year only one flowered, and poorly, so I'll discard them).  Something has laid an egg in there.  From the size, I'd guess it's one of the hen pheasants who have been wandering about over the last few days.  It's hardly a suitable place for a nest, so presumably it's just been abandoned.  At least she chose a pot where the planting is already fading, rather than squashing a lot of flowering bulbs.

Sadly, the bluetits may have abandoned their attempt to nest in the nestbox; possibly too much activity down there for them.  I haven't seen them going in for a while.  I hope they've found somewhere else.  However the house martins and swallows have started to arrive; a flock of martins were feeding over the field behind us one day, and singletons have been seen overhead.  The blackbirds, thrushes and robins have been having a wonderful week with all the landscaping work going on around the house.  The digging has yielded lots of worms and other buglife, and our soft-hearted builders have been putting the worms aside for the birds, who are becoming quite tame, especially as they're feeding youngsters now.  There's a fledgeling blackbird being fed alongside the drive, and I was scolded one day by the thrush when I went into the Dump corner, not realising that a young thrush was hiding in there.  One of our male blackbirds has, after much practice, managed to master the art of hanging onto the fatball feeder; it's not a very elegant performance, but he's able to stay on there for several seconds now and peck some beakfuls out.

The building work has limited the scope for much other gardening this past week; I've been clearing and cutting back to make space for the new paths.  The builders kindly lifted some of my favourite hellebores from the path, which have been bedded in temporarily to recover until I can find somewhere permanent for them.  I'm still planning the new bed behind the house; today (nice and sunny, but cool) that area wasn't shaded by the house until about 3pm, and the definition of 'full sun' is 6 hours of sunshine, so it should be suitable for quite a range of plants.

The veg plot has been a bit neglected over the past couple of weeks.  There are various brassica seedlings in the cold frame and greenhouse but they need pricking out and hardening off; the weather continues mostly dry, sometimes bright but with more cold winds and chilly nights than I'd like at this time of year.  The leek seedlings are starting to appear, but the spring-sown broad beans are patchy at best; I wonder if some of them have been eaten by mice.  There's just time to sow some replacements if I'm quick about it.

Problem, challenge, opportunity (II)

A lot of work ...

Well, so much for my plans to concentrate on weeding and sorting out the veg plot beds.  For some time we've been planning to widen the path along the back of the house, on an area which is, or more correctly has been, a flower bed; we're finally about to go ahead with that, and the builder is coming much sooner than anticipated.  So the focus is now on clearing / weeding that area before he starts, a lot of work against a deadline!  The builders will dig out the area, but there are things in there - couch grass and vetch among others - that need careful root removal if they're not to reappear in future years between the flagstones, and I'd rather do that myself to be sure.  The bed has been left pretty much to its own devices in recent years, in anticipation of the building work, and there isn't much in there that needs preserving.  There's a lot of brunnera, seedlings of the Brunnera 'Jack Frost' which might just lie outside the paved area, though I've taken divisions from it and planted them elsewhere in the garden, so the parent plant can be removed (if I can get it out!), a couple of aquilegias and the big patch of red wallflowers (I'll take cuttings and dig them out, as late as possible as the bees are enjoying them).  Sadly we will have to remove all the hellebores that have self-seeded between the existing flagstones, including my favourite H. argutifolius, although there's a seedling from that now located in the front garden.  I will also have to bite the bullet and remove the very old, blackspot-ridden climbing rose on the back wall - probably not before time either.  The ground slopes away very slightly from the house, and I originally built a low drystone retaining wall in this bed; I've started to dismantle it, exposing a large population of slugs and snails, some of which I threw out onto the lawn where the song thrush gratefully disposed of a few.  I also found a little toad hiding in there, and re-homed him under a large patch of ivy where I hope he'll be safe.

There is an opportunity associated with the work, however: a new bed alongside the new path will be further away from the house and its shadow, and - although east-facing - will get sun for much of the afternoon, much more than the old bed did.  An opportunity for some sun-loving plants!

Fortunately the weather is continuing dry; it has been a very dry April and I've had to do some watering of pots and veg seedlings, but it means that I can work comfortably outside and the soil is easy to work.  Temperatures have fluctuated between a pleasantly warm weekend (meals outside in the summerhouse) and, today, a chill that had me revert to full winter working clothes including jacket and warm gloves.

Tulip 'Orange Emperor'

Tulip 'Exotic Emperor'

The tulips are continuing to come out.  I'm very pleased with 'Exotic Emperor', a lovely creamy white with a few green markings on the outside, and 'Orange Emperor', a vivid, luminescent clear orange with the same green markings; both are sturdy plants with full, bold flowers.  The other pots are still in bud but coming on nicely, and there are a few odds and sods (from last year's pots) in odd corners, including some 'Havran', 'Couleur Cardinal' and 'Angelique'.  There are still a good few daffodils in reasonable shape, and the path along the hedge is lined on one side by honesty (Lunaria annua) and on the other by doronicum - a fine colourful effect.  And the orchids are starting to push their leaves up through the lawn.

Honesty and doronicums

The pulmonaria underneath the winter honeysuckle seems to be a favourite of the local sparrows, who were happily pulling the flowers off one day.  I don't mind as the plant is barely visible anyway.  We've had a very active lot of birds, some (blackbirds, song thrush, robins) taking food away for youngsters.  A pair of pied wagtails appeared one day (normally we only see them in the garden in the direst winter weather), as did a pair of mistle thrushes, attracted by the old apples put out for the blackbirds; long-tailed tits still come from time to time and all of our usual birds are very much in evidence.  The bluetits are indeed nesting in the nestbox, apparently undeterred by our being in the summerhouse.  There may also be a wren's nest down in the bottom hedge area as we've seen one there quite a lot.  With the weather being so dry, the water is a big attraction for the birds, and there has been much bathing in the pond - although the level is dropping so that may not continue for long!

Lx4 squared

When I was planning the garden, more years ago than I care to think about, I spent quite a lot of time deciding on a design for the veg plot.  Ornamental potagers were very fashionable at the time and, although I had no ambitions for anything as decorative as the one at Barnsley House, I wanted raised beds to help with the shallow soil and so there had to be a geometric design of sorts.  The plot is three times as long as it is wide, so I divided it into three roughly square areas.  I toyed in my imagination with various complicated layouts, settling in the end for something relatively simple: the outer squares contain four rectangular beds around a small central one, and the middle square has four L-shaped beds around a slightly larger central bed.  The outer areas work fairly well, but the L-shaped beds were always a little too small and awkward, and moving about the plot has always involved a lot of zigzagging or jumping over the corners of beds.  It didn't help that I made the paths between the beds much too narrow (trying to cram in as much as possible).  The whole central area hasn't been much in use for a few years now as various weeds, especially couch grass, have taken hold, with the couch establishing itself under the paths (originally, gravel - now much worn away - over black plastic).  I've decided to simplify things, do away with the central bed in this middle area and turn the four Ls into four squares.  This is proving easier said than done, and not just because of all the weeding involved; actually digging up the gravel and plastic is slow work.  My aim for this year is to get two of the beds squared off - but it is, if I may say so, proving L-ish hard.

Tulip 'Chato'

The tulips are starting to flower, with the first of the new (to me) varieties starting to come out.  'Exotic Emperor', a white, is beginning to open, and 'Chato', now in its second year, has survived well, with a good number of flower heads; it is paired with Muscari 'Valerie Finnis', which last year flowered very early but this year is coming out at the same time as the tulip.  Some of the tulips lifted from previous years' pots have been planted out in a couple of corners and some of them are going to flower, but are a little way off yet.  I keep forgetting to mention the rather ungainly and woody clump of wallflowers ('Sunset Red') which I've kept for a couple of years to provide cuttings; they're hardly attractive plants but the flowers are making a very vivid statement by the back door.  It's a pity they don't do very well in a vase (the leaves go yellow quickly and, even if you strip those off, the stems tend to become slimy in water).

Wallflower 'Sunset Red'

Spring is edging slowly forward, with some pleasant sunshine but a chilly wind and a few colder nights (the greenhouse heater is back on at night, especially now that there are some tender seedlings in there; I'm keeping the chilli, tomato and aubergine seedlings indoors for the moment).  There's much bird activity, and the sparrows have been enthusiastically pulling moss out of the lawn for their nests.  The nestbox has been put up on the new summerhouse wall, with some protective chicken netting around it to keep the woodpecker from getting its head in; it's probably too late for the nuthatches to take advantage of it this year, but a pair of bluetits have been staking it out, so we might get a brood in there after all!

Repurposed

Repurposed!

There doesn't seem to be a good time of year for hacking back overgrown ivy.  In spring and summer there's always the risk that something is nesting in there; then it starts flowering, providing valuable nectar for insects late in the year, and then the berries feed the blackbirds in the late winter and early spring.  Then the nesting starts again .... But the ivy in the area between the drive and the front garden is totally out of control, and there's no sign of any nesting activity in there, so today I decided to do some serious work on it, tackling inch-thick stems all tangled together and pulling as much of it as possible out of the little drystone wall that forms the end of the front garden.  Ivy and drystone walls don't make good bedfellows: the ivy stems push the stones apart as they grow and eventually the whole thing falls down.  I'm having to dismantle some of the top part of the wall to get the ivy stems out, which is good exercise as the coping stones are quite big and heavy.  I lifted one out, and realised that it was carved.  It looks like the corner of a stone door- or window-frame, or perhaps a fireplace, and it almost certainly comes from the castle that was outside the village in the Middle Ages.  This was demolished centuries ago, becoming a sort of builders' merchants for the villagers, who pillaged it for stones for their houses and field walls; we've already pulled a carved coping stone out of our garden wall in the past, but this one is even more impressive.  Having been repurposed as a garden wall topping, it has now been repurposed again as a garden ornament; fortunately I found another big stone to replace it on top of the wall.  Still plenty more ivy, and big wall stones, to tackle another day!

Tulip 'Praestans'

Yellow tulips

The weather has been a mix of sunshine and mizzly or downright wet, but the wind has turned from the east to the south and it's nicely mild.  The plants are responding to the spring weather: the late daffs are opening, as are the first of the tulips (a couple of little red ones, probably 'Praestans', half-hidden near the bottom of the garden, and the early yellows under the dining room window).  The honesty is in flower too, and so are the gooseberries; not that you would notice except that the bees are all over them.  The garden is starting to look half-decent again, especially as the lawn was cut last weekend for the first time this year.

Bergenia 'Bressingham White'

The rain the other day was a good reason to get on with the seeds.  The propagator is now on, full and double-banked, with those that don't need heat on the staging.  I've started hardening off the contents of the cold frame, since much of what is in there was only there to be protected from slugs and snails rather than cold.  I've discovered that the reason that the dahlia shoots are not doing well is that there are slugs in the greenhouse, cunningly hiding in the growbags (which still have salad leaves in them).  A few slug pellets have been put down.

Narcissus 'Jenny', with Brunnera

Outside, weeding goes on.  The potatoes were planted today, International Kidney (early) and Pink Fir Apple (maincrop) - on the old principle of planting your earlies late and your lates early.  A few lettuce seedlings, with plastic bottle cloches, have gone in between them, and in the next bed the leeks have been sown.  Some hazel branches have been laid on top to discourage the birds from dust-bathing on the seedbed; they usually leave the leek seedlings alone, but raked bare earth is a temptation to them.  The partridges are the worst, as, being larger, their dust-baths cause more damage, but we've only had very occasional visits from a pair this year, and not (so far) in the veg plot.

Just curious

The weather is still chilly - particularly the last couple of days - and very windy.  The greenhouse heater is back on and the door mostly firmly closed.  Before the cold snap, however, I was happily leaving the door open, and one day I stepped inside and found our handsome local cock pheasant standing on the staging.  I'm not sure which of us got the bigger shock.  He was certainly taken aback, and tried to fly at the windows, shredding the already fragile bubblewrap and scattering its fixings.  I went back indoors to leave his exit route clear, but after a few minutes he was obviously still in there; it was only when I approached from the back of the greenhouse to flush him towards the door that he jumped down and ran off.  Apart from the bubblewrap he didn't seem to have done any damage (or made any mess), although he had been standing on a tray of seedlings (which recovered).  He had wandered past the greenhouse a few times while I was in there, and seemed interested in it; I think he was just curious, but I hope his curiosity has been satisfied for the time being.  He has been giving me a wider than usual berth since.

The seedlings - old seeds of brussels sprouts and lettuce, sown last autumn in the hope of getting a few baby salad leaves from anything that germinated - have done rather better than I expected, and I've since potted up a few of them to grow on.  The aubergine and chilli seedlings have also been potted on, and the tomatoes sown; all of these are still indoors as it's warmer there.  The first tomatoes have germinated - good old 'Gardener's Delight', from a packet of seeds that's now about four years old, beating the newly opened packets of other varieties!  Various brassica seeds have also been sown in trays in the greenhouse.  I must get on with sowing the flowers.

Freesia from the greenhouse

Another 'better than expected' in the greenhouse are the freesias.  They were planted in pots last year but did very little, and I put the pots outside and rather forgot about them.  In the autumn I noticed that the leaves were coming up, so I decided to give them another chance and kept them over winter in the greenhouse; the first flowers have now been cut for the house.

Outdoors, the daffodils are in full swing and a few tulip buds are showing.  Newly opened flowers include the Anemone blanda at the bottom of the garden, the Bergenia 'Bressingham White' in the front garden (a little aggressively white beside Narcissus 'Jenny' (ivory with pale lemon cup) so I may move it later in the year), Epimedium sulphureum and the first of the doronicums.  The cowslips in the lawn are starting to open, as is one of the osmanthuses (the other has been cut back rather hard so may not do much this year).  The hellebores are still looking good (the photo is of a big one that is rather out of sight and out of mind most of the time, being a self-seeded plant almost under the long hedge, but it's a good do-er), and the winter-flowering shrubs are still in bloom, despite the bullfinches' fondness for the winter honeysuckle shoots.  The cold weather - including some hail and sleet - doesn't seem to have held the plants back, and the next few days are to bring more sunshine, so I'm hoping for even more colour in the garden soon!

A host of golden daffs

First cowslips

Anemone blanda

Hellebore in full flower

Epimedium sulphureum

On every tree there sits a bird ....

... and a lot of them are singing a song of love, but not all.  One day we spotted a large shape half-hidden among branches high in the big ash tree, sitting silently and fairly still, presumably just resting.  All we could make out was the grey face and hooked bill of a predator, a pair of yellow feet and the end of an untidy-looking tail.  It was too big for a sparrowhawk, and it wasn't streamlined enough; also the other birds would have hidden from a sparrowhawk, whereas they didn't seem too bothered about this visitor (indeed a goldfinch moved closer in to get a good look).  We concluded that it was a buzzard, possibly a young bird; but when it finally took off there were the long, pointed wings and forked tail - a red kite.  It's the first time we've seen one in a tree.  They take their prey on the ground, so the other birds were reasonably safe while they were perched in a tree.

At the other end of the size scale, a goldcrest has been twittering in the hazel trees a couple of times; and another welcome arrival was a song thrush.  A little less welcome is the attention paid by the bullfinches to the plum tree; a pair were also feeding on the winter honeysuckle again, which matters less as the flowers will peter out soon.  The second butterfly of the year also appeared: a comma, sunning itself in the veg plot.  Lots of bees of various types, which is encouraging; I must be doing something right.

Daffs, pulmonaria and wallflowers

A little posy of violets

The weather has brought a couple of lovely days, with quite warm sunshine; I managed lunch on the garden bench one day, very comfortably and without a jacket.  It has now turned chillier and windier, but still more April than March.  The daffodils are out, and there's even a Silver Parrot tulip in bud in one of the pots.  The pulmonaria continues to do well; I cut some today with a few small daffodils and some red wallflowers (rather a riotous colour scheme, but one to brighten up dull days).   I've been catching up with garden jobs, belatedly finishing the pruning of the big apple tree (balancing on the top of a ladder with the loppers isn't my favourite job), ditto of the buddleja and disposing of all the prunings (lots of beanpoles for later in the year), tying in the autumn broad beans and sowing the spring ones, potting on the aubergines and chillies and sowing the tomato seeds.  The greenhouse bubblewrap is starting to fall off - the holes that the studs go through have become too big so I don't think I'll get another year out of the stuff - but the warmer weather is making it rather redundant now; I've had the door and vents open a few times, and switched the heater off (I hope I don't regret that).  The first dahlias ('Bishop of Auckland') have shoots coming through; today I also potted up 'Ambition', which was such a dauntingly large clump of tubers that I hadn't tackled it before, and I had to cut it in two to fit it into the pots, so I hope it doesn't object too much. We'll see!

The spring is sprung

The spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where de birdies is? - well there's no lack of birds in the garden, but the lawn is certainly growing and will need cutting soon, and spring is definitely sprung.  Although the weather has been rather up and down, when we've had sunny days there has been gentle warmth in the sunshine, and the wildlife is responding accordingly: the first bees, the first butterfly today (a brimstone, probably, although I was too far away to tell), the sudden appearance of clouds of little flies, the birds starting to collect nesting materials.  A male blackbird was singing quietly by the drive yesterday, and today there were two male bullfinches pecking at the buds on the plum tree (I'm afraid I chased them off).

Crocus angustifolius

Self-sown pulmonaria

The spring flowers are also coming thick and fast.  The snowdrops are past their best, but the hellebores are still in full swing, the crocuses are out (mostly 'Whitewell Purple', 'Cream Beauty' and 'Blue Pearl' but also a group of large purple ones near the dogwood which I'm sure I didn't plant) and the daffodils are just about to open (some of the small ones are already out).  There's also a pot of Crocus angustifolius, bright golden-yellow and lovely in the sunshine. The pulmonaria by the wall is doing very well, but I'm disappointed that the little daffodil 'Silver Chimes' which should be nearby and which I really enjoyed last year hasn't appeared at all.  There are still late winter jobs to be done: the apple tree is only half-pruned and I need to finish off pruning the buddleja, not to mention tying in the broad beans (not yet done despite my good intentions last week) and sowing the next batch.  Then there are all the seeds to be sown in the greenhouse - and first I'll need to find some space in there for them.  Let's not mention all the weeding that hasn't been done!

There hasn't been much to cut for indoor display yet, so a couple of bunches of supermarket tulips have been brightening things up.  I also managed a very little vase of sweet violets.  These grow down at the bottom of the garden, but I've been thinking about digging them out; I had imagined picking posies of scented violets for the house but never seemed to find enough, and for most of the year they're just green leaves.  In fact I had reprieved them precisely for the leaves, because although they're fairly unremarkable they do provide a nice fresh green even when other plants are flagging in summer.  However the other day I noticed that the plants were in bloom, and although the flowers are tiny they produced a surprising amount of perfume when brought inside; so maybe I'll keep them a little longer.

Some cheerful tulips

In between the nice sunny days there has been quite a bit of rain and some wind, and there have been cold days (but little actual frost).  One day we had rain, sleet and hail.  Still, it's only early March and it's par for the course at this time of year.  But there's a real feeling that warmer days aren't too far off even if there are still a few chilly spells ahead.