Well this doesn’t seem to be working. it could be the very dry weather followed by the hot sun, or being repeatedly hit with a cricket ball – but so far, the dogwood isn’t looking very happy and it might be the way I cut it back…. (mind you it looks alright in this photo).
It is really hard to take decent pics of it. It’s partly the angle and partly because I feel like I am lurking. There’s someone new living there and they often sit working at the window and it seems odd to take pics.
I THINK it looks lovely. It makes me smile as I walk past it and it’s full of flowers and looks like a meadow. The turkey sage I got from Lidka is coming up now, and looks like little pagodas (though I am v glad they’re not in my garden).
Not bad.
It crawled past us. I’m pretty sure it was a toad. It was dry looking and warty and didn’t look like our frogs and it walked away from the pond and hide under some logs. It looked very cross! I LOVE toads
Edie took most of these. I love May. Even when it’s raining. Everything is coming to life.
They are going strong. There are LOADS of them. They are slightly changing shape so they look more sculpted. They don’t look like black dots, they look like brown geometric shapes. They don’t have stubby back legs yet. Loads of them squish into the shallows under the rocks in the sunny bit (it HAS been v cold).
So this is the sward now.
That bloody ladder is there. There is a pigeon waiting to eat the grass seed. It’s not exactly weed free, and you can see the lumps where the different clumps came from but all the same! Not bad
Like lots of people, I am taking part in No Mow May Just writing it makes me HAH! like Patty and Selma.
We’ve been heading towards not mowing for a while. On a lot of the lawn, we don’t have grass anyway so it’s not like we have a green sward. We let it grow last May, and at the end of the month, me and the kids measured out our square metre like you’re supposed to and found we had enough flowers to keep one bee alive for about 10 minutes.
This year, we have more things. Maybe because it’s not as hot. Maybe because we let it grow last year. But all the things we have are either dandelions or things that have escaped from the beds (eg; lily of the valley).
And it makes me cross that all the pics (see on No Mow May link above!) are all beautiful meadows and orchids and rare grasshoppers and how you can cut a path through it like a swathe. You can’t do that in a small suburban garden. Actually, I have tried and it doesn’t look bad but STILL…
Also, I am struggling with dandelions. I know I should love them but I don’t. I am prejudiced against them. I have shifted how I see wild flowers. I don’t see weeds. I see beauty and delicacy and tenacity. But I still feel old-fashioned about dandelions. They ARE WEEDS! I understand how most people still see wild flowers when I look at dandelions! They smell horrible, they are deep-rooted bullies and take over all the grass. I know they make bees and hoverflies happy but I just don’t like them. We have more this year and they are a bit better growing in drifts, but STILL….
ps: we DO have grasshoppers (we’ve seen their legs sticking out of the bug hotel when something is eating them) and mining bees that live in the sandy patches so obviously our scabby lawn is rich (-ish) environment but STILL…
The seeds grew into little plants! The greenhouse is full and most of them aren’t quite ready to plant-out but they are getting there. I feel a sense of quiet satisfaction!
I have learnt some things. It is a lot of work. And you need an exit strategy – you can’t stop once they’ve germinated. They need potting on and potting on; and the right amount of water; and hardening off. It’s a conveyor belt and getting them through the first stage is just the start.
And potting-on is a LOT more complicated than Monty Don lets on and they don’t just come out with a little push and lovely rootball. Things to remember:
It doesn’t help that I don’t really know what everything is! The Queen Anne’s lace is doing well, as is the Greek oregano (a third in heavy soil, a third in sandy soil, a third not done yet). The scabious (or is it nicotiana?) I did first and doing okay. I’ve only just done the nicotiana (or scabious?), which I did all the wrong things to (see above) is alive now, but will it be tomorrow?
Here is a picture of my greenhouse which looks like a full cupboard.
I do. I started looking at the lichen round A&A’s house – and bought a book about it. It’s a very curious plant. I’ve got some growing on the fuchsia. This is some I saw up on Penlee Battery in Cawsand though, blossom and lichen at once.
It’s getting a lot of traffic. It’s under the cherry which is all blossom – and it seems to be at a sort of crossroads as the insects come through the back gardens. I could not love my crab apple more.
I never would have thought I would post more about navelwort than anything else. But here it is. These are the two in my garden. I thought they were the same plant, and then I thought maybe one was the male and one female. Now I wonder if they are different plants altogether?
I saw a lot like this in Cawsand – some with rosettes that grow into spikes and some with just spikes. Spiky one looks a bit sad TBH
I love gooseberries. They are hard to find in shops. For my birthday this year, Luke got me 2 gooseberry bushes. Here they are in March. Let’s see how they go…
May 12th Update
One had flowers and now has got tiny berries, one hasn’t. I’m not quite sure what to do next….
It’s hard to know if gardening for wildlife is making a difference to the wildlife in my garden. I know it makes me happy, but does it work for the wildlife?
I don’t know if we have more bees, bugs & insects. I think we do but I didn’t look for them before so I don’t know. I know we have fewer birds (we used to have blackbirds, dunnocks, wrens, more robins, lots more blue tits) but I think that’s probably cats and gentrification.
I think my garden is so small, it’s hard to see if it makes a difference on its own. So many external factors affect it. I don’t have the skills and patience to do in-depth bug counts like that lady in Sheffield. But I guess part of the point of recording it here, is to see long term if stuff works.
Today it was sunny for the first time for ages. There were hairy footed flower bees (finally)) and lots of different hoverfies (I have hoverfly lagoon in the back passage); and maybe small wasps, a cabbage white and a speckled brown (which I’ve never seen before). The tadpoles are hatching, and the 4 birds that do visit are eating from the plants not just the bird feeder, and the “waste” I didn’t clear off the beds but left to rot down looks like it’s turned into flowers. So today feels like a good day!
I have followed the advice of the nice people at Hotbin and the top of my hotbin smells nice and wholesome; it is warming up and it feels like I am finally becoming someone who Can Compost.
I know this is my fault – but the bottom is still very smelly and full of flies and vile smelling fluid! Where does it come from? I drain it off every day at at time when I don’t think the neighbours are in their garden. I can’t face a conversation about how I have failed at composting. I know this will get better and gradually stop but at the moment…
I used to coppice my dogwood hard every spring. It gives it lovely red branches but it feels cruel. Also, I am not sure it’s the best way to do it.
This year, I have pruned it not coppiced it. I thought I would chop it to look nice and be a shape I like rather than blindly pursue red stems in the winter.
Let’s see what it looks like next year…
The tadpoles hatched! Our first ever. We’ve had tadpoles before but not from spawn (from other ponds). They started hatching about the 23rd March. They come out very sleepy. They don’t move a lot and at first I thought they might be leeches that had eaten the tadpoles but they are not. Here’s a pic with some still in, some coming out
I have a Hotbin. It smells. It’s full of stinky liquid and slimy slightly rotted vegetables and completely intact twigs. It’s cold. I can’t get it right. I know it’s me not the Hotbin – and they have sent lots of help about how to get it right but it still isn’t. And I’ve looked into Andrew’s and his is lovely and crumbly and wonderful.
I bought it just as lockdown started (so nearly a year?) (and then persuaded Andrew to buy his). I still haven’t got good compost out of it. I got some nearly good stuff a couple of months ago and put the best on the garden as a mulch and the worst back in the bin. This month, I couldn’t bear it any more so I took the smelly disgusting stuff out of the bottom. HB told me to aerate it – the smell is because it is anaerobically composting and I dried it as best I could and this is what it looks like….
I think I was too mean about putting in dry matter/ bulking agent at the start and then it all got squished together – and you keep squashing more in to try and make it work and that makes it worse.
The problem is, once you’ve seen the error of your ways, you’ve got 3 foot of smelly cold crap compost and my garden isn’t big enough to put it anywhere (plus with the smell not fair on the neighbours).
I’m posting this in the hope it’s just one in the first in a series that ends up with lovely compost.
Here is some navelwort we found growing up the Avon Gorge. With Edie’s welly for scale. She wears a size 13 kid’s fit.
We got some! Last week of Feb, we got three lots. We’ve had single clumps before but they’ve only once made it to tadpoles. It seems very early and lots of it is not IN the water but floating above. But we have to assume the frogs know what they are doing.
My Garden 