Out of season

This cowslip should be flowering in spring, but here it is in my garden in September, trying to clash with the (admittedly rather limp) violas - this pot was prettier earlier in the year when, under the clematis which is its main occupant, there were violets and crocuses. The bowl below is more the kind of thing I'm aiming for when it's at its best - but the pot above is meant to be resting at this time of year (although you can see I made an attempt for summer interest with some lobelia which totally failed to grow in our cold summer).

I like doing this kind of gardening in miniature. That alchemilla seedling will have to go, it'll take over completely any minute!

Bugged by inconsistency

It's official, I'm thoroughly inconsistent. Yesterday I was delighted to find that the hens view earwigs with voracious enthusiasm. Then I came in and spent ten minutes rescuing and trying to photograph a grasshopper. You can see it if you peer closely at the middle of the picture. It's a field grasshopper, chorthippus brunneus, I think.

Time marches on

Two  months since I've been here! Obviously, life is so uneventful that there is simply nothing to say, I'm just swimming serenely along with my feathers only slightly ruffled by a passing breeze - or else, it has been so frantic that I haven't had time to sit and write. And it's the latter, I'm afraid, there's just too much to try to fit into the day - it doesn't matter how hard you try to organise work, noting schedules and deadlines and calculating to be sure that one job will be finishing as another arrives: authors don't work like that, and it all manages to come along at once. Add in a funding emergency, and that's it - the garden is utterly neglected, apart from four courgette plants limping along anaemically. What is wrong with them I can't imagine, except that it was cold and wet when they were planted. True, the strawberries have been tremendous, and the one cucumber was delicious. I don't mind that only two of the hens have been laying properly, because we still have more than enough eggs (who's got time to cook?).

I've been pleased, too, with the dozen pelargoniums I bought as plug plants, which are all growing healthily, and the sweet peas are a pleasure. If I haven't seen many butterflies, I've enjoyed the moths at dusk, and we've had an influx of scarily large beetles (as yet unidentified: I think some kind of ground beetle, and yes, I do know what they are not - not stag beetles or chafers; this is a beetle I haven't met before, and no, I didn't take its photograph...). Earlier in the month we heard quail calling, which was exciting, and the grey partridges creak away in the evenings. For a week or so, a red-legged partridge took to yelling its head off on a fencepost in the paddock. Was it trying to intimidate the hens? Or just out-shriek the competition? One morning I woke about 5 because there was so much noise outside my window - it was five blackbirds on the lawn, all scolding a partridge which was looking singularly unimpressed.

The most pleasure has come from a family of garden warblers who are constantly a-flutter around the house, tiny delicate birds with heavy eye-makeup and personalities out of all proportion to their scale, and the swallows - all day the sky is alive with them and the count of the phone lines is up to at least 50. OH says that when he is mowing they play chicken with the tractor, actually flying underneath it as it makes its steady progress round the paddock. There is certainly plenty for them to eat.

 And the rain it raineth every day (but at least these streptocarpuses are doing quite well...)

Firebird!

Last week I was visiting the APs in Devon and took the opportunity to do a little pottering in the garden - the weather was mostly mild and sunny, and the terrace was busy with deep blue damsel flies, orange tip butterflies, even the occasional small blue. My mother and I amused ourselves by counting bird species actually nesting in the garden - we got to well over 30, a count that includes ravens, jays, sparrowhawks, nuthatches...I've just done a similar count for home, and achieved similar numbers of very different birds (and because our northern garden doesn't include many large trees, the way the Devon one does, I expanded our area to include the fields immediately surrounding us, so the buzzards count here, but not in Devon). As I'm writing this at my desk in the window, a pair of bullfinches - regular visitors attracted by my rather laissez-faire atttitude to dandelions - landed in the ash tree opposite.

The high point of the Devon visit, though, was a sighting unlike any I've experienced before: as I walked across the terrace there was a tremendous kerfuffle as two birds hurtled into a pittosporum bush, shrieking their heads off. A high piercing note, an unmistakable screech of fury, and the minute bird emitting the racket was positively bouncing up and down on his branch. Yet despite his tiny size he was highly visible, because he was raising and flashing his crest, a violent streak of fiery orange that flashed in the sunlight. I watched spellbound for several minutes while he bounced and flashed, until the object of his wrath burst from the depths of the bush and fled across the wooded slope below the terrace. The owner of the spectacular headgear was a goldcrest, one of the enchantingly named kinglet family, and our smallest songbird:

Photo from Wikipedia

How such a tiny bundle of fluff could make such a noise I can't imagine, but the picture above does give some idea of the brilliance of his crest. In the past I've struggled to see these elusive creatures, which are more generally "sighted" by tracking their creaky tseeping cry (what Wikipedia calls "a subdued rambling sub-song" - love it!) to a bush and then peering into the murky interior to see the odd flick of a wing - they like dense bushes like yew, and nest in conifers, which makes them especially hard to see. I believe we may have them around us here in Northumberland, I think I heard them in the woodland a couple of fields away, but the tree cover around our garden is not heavy enough for them to visit us here.

I'm back home enjoying the sparrows - my mother is delighted that they now have a regular pair, and envies us our rambunctious flock of more than thirty. Who would ever have thought that sparrows could be rare?

Easter

A very young Scotch Dumpling, a cooking apple with glorious flowers. The fruit are less appealing to look at, being pale green and knobbly, but I like the pleasant apple froth it creates when cooked.

Easter weekend was uneventful, which was nice, and we had some welcome rain on Saturday evening. Oh yes, and the swallows are back, they arrived on the 20th. Lovely to see them.

Home to roost

I know not everyone takes pleasure in having a rookery next to their home, but I enjoy our neighbours most of the time, and often stop to watch them when I'm shutting up the chickens for the night. This is only a very small part of the flock that musters in waves in the pine trees before they all finally set off to spend the night in the woods below us. I do dissuade them from eating at the bird table, though, as they frighten away the smaller birds.

Moonrise

"Softly, silently, now the moon
Walks the night in her silver shoon"

The rest of Walter de la Mare's poem is not very appropriate, since it talks about a harvest moon, I think, and this one wasn't very silver-y. Actually, the way it was cradled in the branches of the tree made me think of Sir Patrick Spens: 

"I saw the auld moon late yestreen

Wi' the new moon in her arms"

I hope in this case it doesn't betoken a "deidly storm"! We've had enough weather for now.

Winter visitors

 Fieldfare

Photo taken in Rumia, Poland by Adam Kumiszcza

They're back, the fieldfares, and my heart gave a real leap when I saw them in the ash trees at the top of the garden this morning. They are much later than in some areas of the country, but I've found that to be the case every year. There will be no shortage of berries for them this year.

The old ladies sunning

The Bluebells do like to take advantage of good weather - it was very wet most of the week, so they didn't get out much. Today is warmer, if a bit windy, so they can enjoy it. Here they are - scraggy old dears!

For most of the past two months my dressing table has been home to various bottles which might make you wonder about my toilette regime. Alongside the delicately packaged Calvin Klein 1, Paloma, something with such a pretty box that I can't bring myself to start it, and the usual prophylactics against ageing that we over-50s allow ourselves to be conned into buying (though mine are distinctly closer to the cold cream end of the market than the designer labelled kind - indeed, they would be cold cream if it weren't that I don't much like the smell!)...I digress, alongside these fancy bottles are white containers stating "Total Mite Kill!", "Poultri-Drops", and "Just for Scaly Legs!". It comes of living in a small cottage - when you unwrap a parcel there is nowhere to put anything down, and the last line of resort is always my dressing table - things there are out of the way but easy to find. They should, of course, be on their way to the bin where all such items are kept, but the scaly leg treatment needs to be applied regularly, so it's good to keep it where I notice it from time to time.

I'm happy to report that the Bluebells and I are recovering nicely from our scale problems, but this has been the worst year I've known for pests and unpleasantnesses. We made the mistake, too, of moving the girls into a wooden house - we had to move them from their wheeled Eglu, a wonderful beast known here as the Vardo, because Steerage is rather feeble, and stopped being able to flutter up the ladder. We tried customising the ladder, to no avail, and for several weeks younger son and I took turns at crawling into the run to pick her up and put her into the house each night, but that was less than ideal on several counts: first, she also tended to take a nose dive (beak dive?) or her way out in the morning; second, it was frequently a horrible, muddy task and very difficult in the dark, taking both of us, one to hold the chicken and one to hold the torch; and third, it meant at least one of us had to be here, since OH is, like Pooh Bear, a trifle stout, to put it kindly. The wooden house was a cheap option, but by mid-summer we were fighting mite infestations (and more earwigs than you've ever seen, yeuch!). The roof blew off in a summer gale, too, leaving three rather ruffled and indignant ladies, so a necessary accessory ever since has been a large bag of potting compost on top. I expect you know that if you heave a bag of compost off a chicken house roof and onto the ground, it tends to split?

We got tired of the wooden retirement home (not as tired as itchy hens, I'm sure) and the new retirement home is a handsome latest-style Eglu Go. I think with two Eglus we are probably producing the most expensive eggs in the history of humanity (best not to mention this to OH!), but they taste wonderful (the eggs, that is), and we do love our girls. We do manage to be pragmatic up to a point - one was despatched when she became ill: the vet might have been able to prolong her life at the expense of her comfort, but it seemed much kinder to get her misery over and done with. As long as the girls take pleasure in strolling round the paddock, and stretching their wings out in a dust bath, though, we are happy to clean them out, chat to them and provide quantities of dried mealworms for their delectation. Boy, do chickens love mealworms! How do they know they're so good? Betty runs across the paddock shrieking with excitement when she sees the tub. Yesterday, she flew half its length (possible slight exaggeration, but it was an impressive feat for an old lady).

Off now to check that the buzzard isn't anywhere to be seen - regular readers may remember Betty's nasty experience? Her confidence is entirely restored, but when they are out frequent checks are necessary, and if it's about, the girls have to go in. If we're in the garden, of course, it's a different matter, and then they really enjoy the company.

New girls

 The Bluebell girls are getting quite elderly, and we only have three left, so we decided it was time to add to the flock. We're delighted with the four new girls - 1 black rock and three speckeldys. As with the Bluebells, where the original leader of the flock was one of the two white hens (succeeded when she died suddenly by the other one), the black rock has immediately appointed herself Chicken-in-Charge, and is living up to her name, Pocahontas. (Well, it suited her.) The others are just a little younger, I think.

Angel eyes

My mother and I each have one of these, a pelargonium called Angel Eyes, which seems to be a very prolific flowerer, My plant is only a baby, and survived a hot airless journey home from Devon last month.

Next week is going to be purgatory, with four windows being replaced on Thursday. This means that half the contents of my tiny office space will have to be packed up and moved, including of course my computer. So three days disruption for one day of actual work. Meanwhile, the ongoing broadband nightmare means that the router which is sitting beside my desk absolutely must not be switched off, and the track is being dug up to try to address some of the also ongoing water supply problems. Oh, and someone should turn up to replace the oven element for the third time. The last two weeks have seen BT out goodness knows how many times, a surveyor for the windows, the lawnmower repair man, the oven man, someone to cut the hedge - considering that I can go for whole weeks seeing no-one but the family and maybe the postie, it all feels a bit overwhelming.

All I want is a hermitage with good broadband - too much to ask?

Sleeping dogs

As a rule it's almost impossible to take a picture of Senior Dog upside down and relaxing. Point a camera at her and, quicker than a flash, she's the right way up and four-square in front of you with an expression of eager anticipation. On occasion, you would swear she had managed to conjure a ball out of nowhere, too (what this really means is that she's gone to sleep with one tucked away beside her, just in case...).

So, this afternoon, it took real artfulness - I noticed her upside down while I was putting away the things from the dishwasher. I crept off to collect and switch on the camera. On my return, I picked up the pile of plates and clattered across to the dresser with them, then slid my hand oh so quietly out from behind the dresser door and click! she was caught. Silly old thing! That cushion is just where she likes it. It takes a lot of effort to get a chair just right.

Poorly puppy

The Bolter isn't very well today. She ran full-tilt into Senior Dog a month ago and since then has had bouts of limping after she's been running. She's on rest and anti-inflammatories at the moment, but yesterday I thought she was feeling a bit off-colour and this morning she was sick - quite unusual for her, she has a pretty cast-iron digestive system, trained by years of eating every disgustingly dead thing she can find! She has clearly decided, though, that poorly tummies should be kept warm, and has retired to bed (mine) for the day.I expect the pills have upset her, so we may be in for a couple of days of this.

Reaction sets in

 Photo: angmac

* I've been working really hard for the last couple of months, setting up and running a conference. I'm lucky, really, the people I run it for are nice, the college where it took place last week was comfortable and the staff couldn't have been more helpful, and my wonderful younger son has been my conference assistant for 10 years, not only working hard during the event, but driving us both there and back (have I admitted it here before? I don't drive - and if I did, at conference time, I'd probably kill us both.)

As of Friday afternoon, I'm back, and I enjoyed the weekend. I indulged in the only form of retail therapy that remotely interests me - I spent rather too much at the garden centre, and spent yesterday afternoon up to my elbows in compost. Today, however, despite lovely weather, and a cast-iron (you'd think) excuse to take time off (I am due at least 5 days in lieu, since I worked most weekends in the last month), I turned on the computer - a grant application looms, and I thought I'd better spend some time clearing up the outstanding email, at least. Only to find that the deadline for a second grant application has been brought forward a month, and I now have to prepare 2 submissions in the next three weeks. So now it's 8.15pm and I have alienated both husband and aforementioned wonderful son by losing my temper in an entirely manufactured way. I feel very unkindly towards the world.

Normally, one of the few things I like about being 55 is being much more equable. Most of the time these days I pass pretty convincingly for cheerful, and if I mention a tendency to moodiness people look surprised. Tiredness is my undoing, though, and a conference causes more than just a energy dip. I ran on pure adrenaline for several days, and now I'm suffering the consequences. And I'm afraid the growly black dog may be around for some time, because I hate grant applications more than anything else I can think of. Grrr-r-r.

* This wasn't at all the post I was planning. I was quite cheerful until half way through the washing up...

Blackbirds and thrushes

The blackbirds and thrushes sang in the green bushes…

goes the folk song. Our garden is full of them at the moment, all intent on feathering their nests and nurturing their genes. At this time of year one of my amusements is watching sparrow fights, in which a horde of shrieking fluttering little brown birds rampage round the garden, like small boys in the school playground. This morning, though, it was blackbirds – five of them whizzed past me and into the hawthorn hedge, where I wondered if they would escape without getting spiked, so intent were they on each other.

Now that I’m at my desk, two very handsome song thrushes are stalking round the lawn, while overhead two buzzards soar. They too have been very active in the last few days, with some aerobatic displays more readily associated with some of the more agile raptors. This year I think we are going to have the buzzards nesting in the wood at the foot of the garden, while the sparrowhawks will probably be back in their usual tree just beyond the paddock. With both lots of fledglings screaming imprecations at their parents it could be a noisy summer. If you haven’t heard a hungry young sparrowhawk, believe me, it can shriek for England!

It’s pretty noisy already, in fact. There is a rookery here, and now that the rooks are convinced that spring is here, activity is non-stop. They wake at about 4am, with sleepy squawks and grumbles, and by about 5.30 the air of full of creaks and groans as they gear up for another busy day of collecting twigs. It’s not just picking of sticks (there’s another folk song – I’m as bad as the birds today) from the ground, the trees are full of rooks bent on that perfect twig, tugging away with dogged determination. On the fringes are the jackdaws, but they can’t compete for noise. Rook activity goes on all day, foraging for food and sticks, then as dusk falls those who aren’t nesting gather in our ash trees in great flocks like a flight of broken umbrellas, before rising all at once in a black cloud, streaming overhead on their way to their night roost in the woods.

Spring Bluebells

It was a lovely morning, and while I cleaned out the chicken house, the ladies took a stroll. Betty has entirely forgotten her horrible experience with the buzzard, and investigated every nook and cranny under the ash tree, but the Bluebells preferred to bathe in some nice soft, dry soil. Bliss all round.

Buzzard attack!

 

Along with a lot of other people, I have always believed that buzzards won't attack chickens, so it was a considerable shock to find that while I was away recently, my favourite hen, Betty, had been attacked. She's the smallest of our girls, so it was very fortunate that the attempt was unsuccessful, leaving her bloodied and shocked, but basically okay. The girls had been free to wander in the paddock, which they loved, but have now been relegated to their covered run again, unless there is someone out in the garden to keep on eye on them. We were all outside on Sunday, and it was good to see that she's entirely recovered from the experience (or forgotten all about it). That's a very youthful Betty at the front of the picture - she's not at all pretty, but she is very sweet. When they were free to roam she would rush up the paddock to greet anyone who went out there.

A quick Google search suggests that it's not, after all, uncommon for buzzards to look beadily at chickens, but it does seem significant that it happened at the end the winter, with snow having lain for a much longer period than I've seen for years. When we came to live here about 15 years ago, there were no buzzards at all, but now we have quite a large population. We also have plenty of small creatures as a rule, on which they can feed, but this winter the voles were snug under a couple of feet of snow.

A blousy wench

I can't remember which variety this is - it's the first time it's flowered, just in time to cheer everyone up post-Christmas.

Home again

I am back home, and hope I am not tempting providence by saying so. The APs are managing with some help from the neighbours and FD, true to form, is out and about again, welcomed back by the surprising number of people on the dogwalking circuit who had missed him. And That Dog is fully recovered and as rambunctious as ever. My real crisis is averted for the time being and I am chained to my desk attending to correspondence.

I suppose it's not surprising that I am now having a mini-crise, a crisisette. I'm fretting about eveything: neglected work, neglected garden, the fact that there is nowhere in this house to out anything down any more, and I can't think what to do about it...even my neglected Other Half, since at the start of the summer I had promised that we would have an occasional day out (we can't go far as he has CFS) in our new (to us) car. We have managed a total of two outings all year; most years we make an off-season trip to Seahouses, where we share delicious fish and chips with the dogs and walk on the sands, before a quick stop in Bamburgh on the way home - high excitement in this household, I can tell you, but we haven't got that far. Not that I mind outings when the weather is colder, and the dogs don't care at all, but I just don't have time.

Instead, I've wasted time today dithering over when to go back to Devon - I'll have to go close to Christmas but I can't leave it until then. It's all getting very expensive, but this is absolutely my last whingeing session. Back to writing about nature, I promise!

To which end, I think we'll have a random armadillo to cheer us up (the last was on Geranium Cat's Bookshelf), since I find them very appealing:

Butterflies

This is the time of year when I fret about butterflies! Earlier in the year there seemed, yet again, to be very few in evidence, but in recent weeks there have been good numbers of red admirals, painted ladies, peacocks and large whites around the garden (especially on the buddlejas), with smaller numbers of small tortoiseshell. In the lane there are ringlets and meadow browns as well, although not in such large numbers as in good years. At the weekend I was delighted to see a small copper - pictured below - which isn't very common on our patch, and this made me think idly about keeping some sort of more formal record of the species I see.


The thought led me to the site of the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, from where this picture comes, and where I discovered that there are two people recording species locally (which is done by walking the same route every week for six months of the year). One of them is on Lindisfarne, and the other just a few miles north. They are both recording all the species that I see regularly, as well as a couple more, such as the green-veined white, a butterfly I may well have seen without realising it. I must start looking at the white butterflies more closely.

It would be quite an undertaking for me to walk the same route every week at the moment - I'm away too much - so I am not going to join the scheme, but I walk our track most weeks and it would be interesting to get into the habit of using the recording methodology. Then, if I ever get the chance to retire, I can start doing it properly! Before I got so busy, I used to record for the Nature's Calendar Survey, which tracks wildlife in relation to climate (and ties in to the Spring and Autumnwatch surveys) so my observations will still be useful and I'll be able to compare them with my own records on that site. And maybe I can get younger son interested in taking part, as he takes the dogs along the lane most days (he was with me when we saw the small copper, and wanted to check on its identity as soon as we got home).