Birthday celebrations and a garden quiz

On Saturday we are having a party. The main purpose is to celebrate ’ö-Dzin turning 60, but it is also quite close to my birthday, and we are also delighted that ’ö-Dzin will be finishing at work by the end of May.

Quite a few people are expected, so we have been working hard on the garden to get it looking nice, with plenty of areas for people to sit and enjoy each other’s company. The paths have been cleared; there are twinkling lights in various places; the old log store is now the ‘Cwtch’ with seating inside; and we have bought new benches.

The event is an afternoon-into-the-evening sort of party, so I have devised a garden quiz for the children. I imagine a few of the adults will wish to join in as well. Here is my garden map.

It was fun to draw and I hope everyone will enjoy the quiz that goes with it.

Happy May Day to you all. I hope you remembered to wash your face in the morning dew to ensure a beautiful countenance for the rest of the year!

Spring is springing – flora and fauna

I love spring. It is so wonderful watching the trees and flowers springing into new life. It was actually warm on Saturday which coaxed the cherry blossom to open on the trees on Whitchurch Common. In our garden we have a lot of spring flowers appearing and a healthy batch of spawn. It may be frog-spawn or newt-spawn – or perhaps a mixture of both. The newts were lively today with the sun on the pond.

Daffodils in the evening gloom

Camelia

Primroses by the pond

Spawn starting to grow already

This patch of cyclamen grows a little bigger and stronger every year.

Magpie courtship display

Preparing the stolen feather

Nearly happy with it

Courtship display with the feather in his beak

I saw something quite extraordinary today in the garden. Unfortunately the photos are not very easy to discern as he was quite a way down the garden from me and I had to shoot quickly on zoom.

Our two regular pigeons were visiting. One was on the bird table and the other on the ground. Suddenly a magpie swooped down from a tree and pulled a feather from the plumage of the pigeon on the ground – quite a large feather. He—for I'm sure it was a male—then returned to the tree and plucked bits off the feather for a while. Once happy with it, he started performing a little dance with the feather in his beak like a trophy. It was only at this point that I noticed that there was another magpie in the tree, below him – presumably the female.

I know nothing about the courtship rituals of magpies and have never seen anything like this before.

I wonder whether he succeeded in his wooing.

Garden visitors – some more welcome than others

In the autumn we bought a new bird feeder to replace the old bird table. This feeding station works much better than the old bird table and is proving very popular.

A late afternoon session.

We have a pair of pigeons that visit – they like the peanuts.

I don't mind him visiting as long as he stays on the ground.
I shoo him away when he climbs up to the bird feeders.

Always a favourite. This little chap is a regular.

One of my neighbour's cats with lovely markings.
As long as she stays away from the birds she is welcome.

Slugs – terrestrial gastropod molluscs that may have to chew off their mate's penis

I am not overly fond of slugs. It is not that I do not appreciate them – I just cannot overcome my aversion to their slime, and I object to the harm they do to young and vulnerable plants in our garden. When we first moved to our home—26 years ago—we tried to reduce the slug population. We would go out at night with a torch and a bucket and pick up slugs – hundreds of them. Then we would take the buckets about half a mile away and release the slugs near a local stream where we hoped they would be wet and happy. We had no wish to harm them, but just wanted them to live elsewhere. I have heard that they return to their homes, but cannot believe that they could find their way back from such a distance.

When—after a few months—we appeared to be making no headway in reducing the slug population, we gave up. As I respect their right to exist and feed, I do not put down slug pellets. I limit what I grow and use copper barriers around the pots with new and delicate plants. Copper really seems to work well as a slug barrier.

Slugs are quite extraordinary creatures. They have no skeleton and hence can flatten themselves almost completely to squeeze through the smallest of spaces. They have wonderfully delicate antennae which Wikipedia tells me they can regrow if lost. Apparently land slugs have both male and female genitalia and the penis can corkscrew and get trapped during mating and have to be chewed off by their mate! Now there’s a thing and no mistake. Slugs can also be quite beautifully marked. Many of the one’s that we come across are covered in slug mites.

We have had a problem with slugs in the kitchen for quite a while. A copper slug barrier by the patio door seems to be slowly sorting this out, and we do not think new ones are getting in any more. We are still putting out slugs some nights at the moment though, until the current residents have been evicted. In the morning it is easy to see where they have been by the glistening trails in the kitchen. I find it fascinating that their foul slime can turn into something so shiny and magical that can be brushed away like thistledown.

Transforming a hut into an arbour

The work on the object-formally-known-as-the-retreat-hut continues every weekend. The roof is mostly off, as are the ends and one side. We have decided to keep the wall on the other side and to add a partial roof. Other than this it will be an open, trellised structure with plants growing
over it.

The reason for the partial roof is so that there is still the option of capturing rainwater to run off into the pond. The ponds at that end of the garden are looking most depleted, so it will be good to have some means of keeping the water levels higher. I would like to get a solar-powered pump so that there is water circulating between them, but it will be essential to be sure of a good depth of water for the pump.

We are intending to grow roses, a grapevine, a kiwi vine and a wisteria in the arbour. I have taken cutting from two lovely rambling roses, and we already have the kiwi and grape growing in pots. The wisteria is (hopefully) the only plant we will have to actually buy, and I’d like to purchase one that is quite mature so that it will have some quality of display quite quickly.

There is a small area of garden outside the arbour which is starting to look very nice. This fuschia has been magnificent this year.

Rubber ducks

The new pond, and the rivulet we have made from it to the old pond below, brings me such joy. We have the pump on a timer and every afternoon I sit there for a little while. I listen to the water and watch the rubber ducks dancing in its flow. The moving water has rid the pond of the stranglehold of the duckweed. I have also halved the water-lily which was a little crowded and its has a new flower. We hope that the newts and frogs that live in the old pond will do better with the more aerated water and an open surface free of duckweed. I have seen frogs over the last couple of days, but I haven’t seen a newt for a while.



We have had the two rubber ducks for a while and I like the way they are played with by the water flow. There was a gnome in a boat that I quite liked the look of when we visited the garden centre. If I put that in the pond however, I would run the risk of being excommunicated by all friends of good taste!

A teaching on impermanence

Today we started our dread work of changing the retreat hut at the end of our garden into ... Something else.

'ö-Dzin in his safety gear

It has not really worked out as a retreat hut. Only two people have ever used it for that purpose in the seven years of its life. It was a joyous and inspiring project creating it ... but turned out to be something of a white elephant.

A good start and looking tidier

It was not used and it gradually became unusable. Unfortunately—in our lack of expertise—we did not make the roof with a sufficient angle of pitch and so rain was able to penetrate because it did not run off properly. This got trapped in the roof and in the wall insulation. Also there was no air flow in the hut when it was closed up, and so it became mouldy and rotted.

Our plan is to keep the basic structural frame and turn it into an arbour with plants growing over it.

The merry chuckle of moving water

Our latest garden project has been to transform a raised flowerbed into a pond with a rivulet that flows into the existing pond below it. The rectangular flowerbed pond has water plants growing in it.

This little project has been more successful than I could have possibly hoped. We have put the pump on a timer, so on the days that I come home from staffing Aro Ling Cardiff, the water is already flowing. I love the chuckling gurgle of the moving water. I sit on the bench and appreciate this simple delight.

Poached egg plants

I did not have any decent pictures of the poached egg plants in flower to put in yesterday’s post. I rectified this today by taking a number of shots of them. They are putting in a wonderful display. I hope the bees and butterflies are enjoying them.

There seem to be plenty of flower buds.

The peonies are blooming now as well.

Wild flower garden

We sowed two new circles of wild flowers before we left for Nepal. They seem to be surprisingly difficult to establish considering that they are supposedly ‘wild’ and could be expected to thrive without much care or attention.There are a few tiny shoots showing, but that is all. The patches that we sowed last year are doing well, although only a few varieties have come through. What I would really like is daisies and poppies. We have sowed poppies, so we’ll have to wait and see, but daisies have disappeared from my garden. I’m also hoping to be able to acquire some ramsons.

Celandine

Bluebells & Whitebells with Poached Egg plants front left.

Clover & Dandelion

Wild Strawberry

Buttercups and Red Clover

Merry gurgle of flowing water

This next few posts are catch ups.  Life has been interesting of late – a little too interesting at times.  Sometimes I yearn for a long period of non-eventful life – so that I can then complain about things being too dull!  As if.

So first off, we worked really hard in the garden for a whole weekend to install a pond above an already existing pond to create a waterfall.  It was hard work and my body complained somewhat next day.  It is not finished yet, but the hard graft of digging and moving earth is complete.  It is great, and lovely to be able to sit in the garden listening to the merry gurgle of flowing water.

My new venture is progressing nicely.  References are being taken up and the lease being negotiated.  I do not want to say too much about it until it is more a certainty – hopefully soon.

Then it was time for our annual vacation to Dinbych-y-Pysgod (Tenby) in Pembrokeshire, west Wales.  The photos show the highlights.  Most of the photos on my blog are now taken by me with my flash Canon that I had for my birthday.

Our first trip was a visit to St Govan’s chapel and Bosherton lily ponds.  The weather was glorious, and I am glad we made the most of it because we did not have another day with such fine weather.

The tide was out when we were at the chapel, so we were able to scramble over the rocks to the edge.  Some of the rock pools were deep and full of colourful plants.