Autumn 7

I can't believe it's Tuesday

Tuesday 20th October, 2015

I can’t believe it’s Tuesday already.  The weeks seem to be passing faster and faster and I seem to have less and less to write about.  I tried to fit in a short walk before writing this post, in the hope of finding something interesting to photograph, but my plans were scuppered by a combination of Rugby World Cup quarter final matches, visits to the dentist and plain laziness.  Or maybe my current lethargy is caused by PTSD - not post traumatic stress disorder but Pre-Christmas traumatic stress disorder brought on by the shock of seeing Christmas puddings on display in the supermarket at the beginning of October.

As the days shorten, there is less and less life in the garden.  Most of the bumblebees and butterflies have moved on to another stage in their life cycle or have started their hibernation.  There aren’t even many midges left which is a blessing.  

The variety of birds visiting the feeder is shrinking as more and more desert us at the end of the breeding season to join their winter flocks, or go further afield in search of a warmer climate.  The first regular customers to depart were the greenfinches and lesser redpolls.  Then the goldfinches left, although we have seen one or two stragglers.  Now the number of siskins has dropped dramatically.  I only saw solitary siskins on the feeder earlier this week but there were at least two around because I saw a male and a female.  They looked a bit lost and perched in the tree looking around as though they were waiting for a friend.  On Wednesday morning the little female was on the niger feeder and appeared to be injured because she was only perching on one leg.

After eating she flew off quite strongly.  She was back on Thursday and later in the week I saw an able-bodied female as well as the little one-legged one - so there are at least three remaining in the vicinity.

Now that autumn is here, the fair weather friends have nearly all departed and we will soon be left with the year round residents - the chaffinches, the tits, the robins and the dunnocks, who seem to be back to stay after going missing for the whole summer.

But autumn brings gains as well as losses.  The crabapple is laden with fruit for the blackbirds.

The first nerines have opened - almost a month later than last year.  

There are even a few autumn hues in the garden.  The remaining leaves on the biggest beech by the road are gold and copper . . .

. . . and the Virginia creeper on the garage wall is looking lovely.

I was surprised to see Fly Agaric in the garden again.  They used to grow under the big birch tree but disappeared many years ago after the tree blew down during winter gales.  Now there are two toadstools under our young birch tree that Tim planted behind the house.   I was a bit concerned that the fungus might have contributed to the downfall of our big birch but I need not have worried because I have read that Fly agaric is mycorrhizal, forming a mutually beneficial relationship with its host tree.

If anyone is reading this blog, they must think that I am obsessed by the seasons.  I am.  There is something magical about the seasons, especially for someone like me.  I spent the first half of my life in a subtropical region of South Africa where one season can hardly be distinguished visually from another - even though the temperature varies between cool in winter and unpleasantly hot in summer.  All the major religious festivals were celebrated  in the wrong seasons.  We may have been living in Africa but those of us descended from earlier immigrants from Britain, were still culturally European.  We sent each other Christmas cards decorated with holly and ivy, or robins, or snow scenes . . .  in the middle of summer.  We  ate chocolate eggs and bunnies in autumn to celebrate Easter and the start of spring in the northern hemisphere.  So many of the things that I read about in books were missing from my life - no snow, no bluebells, no blackberries, no holly, no robins.  I felt deprived.  

I was born towards the end of the war and of course times have changed.  Cultural ties with Europe may be disappearing among young South Africans of European descent now that they are part of the famous Rainbow Nation.  I could see a  change even while we were living there.  When I started school we sang patriotic British songs - Hearts of oak, D’ye ken John Peel, etc., and learned some rudimentary British history, and were an enthusiastic part of the Commonwealth.  By the time our children started school, South Africa had become a Republic.  The anti-British Nationalist government was entrenched in power and nobody kenned John Peel any more.

But that is all in the past, thank goodness.  Now I can enjoy the gradual change in seasons on this beautiful Island - photograph the bluebells, pick blackberries, walk in the snow (occasionally), and be entertained by the robins in the garden (every day).  I even have more than my fair share of holly in the garden.

I have finished denuding the holly hedge in the front garden.  I cut all the fuchsia (which is growing up through the holly) down to ground level.  Fuchsia and holly don’t combine well because the fuchsia grows so much faster than the holly.  Although fuchsia can make a pretty hedge, if it is clipped frequently and grows in a sunny position so that it flowers well, it is no good in a mixed hedge . . . especially in a mixed hedge in a damp, shady position where it hardly flowers at all. On Friday I finished the job by cutting through the thick stems with the electric saw.  I needed to do the sawing from our neighbour’s side of the hedge because the hedge grows on a bank and it is easier to work from the lower side.  So I spent Thursday clearing access on the other side of the hedge.  It seems rather silly to be spending so much time working next door when there is so much that needs to be done in our own garden but it is the only way to tame our mutual hedge.

Here are some before and after photos.

The next task is to cut down the old weed/wild flower/fern growth from the areas which have been planted with spring bulbs.  I have started under the hawthorns behind the house.  It is tedious and back-breaking work but it only needs to be done once a year.

I was devastated to find another fatality -  little dead dunnock - on the path behind the house on Saturday.  I cannot be sure whether one of the trespassing cats killed it or whether it panicked and flew into a window but I have been thinking dark thoughts about cats and pondering  the possibility of getting a cat-hating guard dog for the birds.  Apart from the difficulty of persuading Tim that we need a dog, the main problem is that I like the next door cats and I don’t think it would be possible to explain to a dog that some cats are more acceptable than others.  The cats haunting our garden come from across the road and the worst ones are the multiple cats that moved in with their owners about a year ago. I have heard rumours that there are eight of them.

On  Friday the colchicums were glowing in the late  morning sun.  I took some photos but the results were disappointing.  The highlighted areas were glary and over-exposed.  I had the same problem last week in Ballaglass.  Some of the photos were spoiled by small patches of sunlight which bleached out all the detail. So I tried the colchicums again on Monday when there was no sun.  It had rained overnight and although the rain had stopped it was one of those still, overcast days when the air is so damp that it might as well be raining.  I was much happier with the results.

Glary sunlight may be a problem for flower photography but it enhanced the bright colours of this goldfinch.

I have been putting off tidying up the flowers behind the house because they still have a few blossoms and may be useful to some late insects.  On a warmish afternoon, while I was cutting back some plants that had flopped over a path, I heard loud buzzing.  It was a bumblebee, quite a large one, probably a young female which will be hibernating for the winter.  She was taking advantage of the sunny weather to get a last meal of pollen before the colder weather arrives.  She was visiting this Welsh poppy.

She was too heavy to feed on the purple toadflax which the smaller bumblebees love.  It is just a weed but is a wonderful source of food for the pollinators because it flowers from June all the way through till late autumn.

While I was taking those flower photos I kept hearing the noise of flapping wings as the little birds flew around in the tree above the feeders.  I thought it would be a good plan to photograph them from the path behind the house instead of through the window but it was easier said than done.  The birds thought I was too close for comfort and were just flying down to the sunflower seed feeder, grabbing a seed and shooting back up into the tree.  Timing the shots was difficult and focus was also a problem because the feeder was swinging around.  I took twelve  photos before giving up - seven of a blurred feeder and no bird because I took the photo just too late, two blurred photos of a pair of coal tits,  an even more blurred one of a coal tit and a blue tit, an almost acceptable one of a great tit and this one of a blue tit.  It isn’t a good photo but it is the best of a very bad bunch.