Autumn 12

Tail end of autumn

Sunday 29th November, 2015.

Saturday

The second named storm has been and gone and was barely noticed on the Island.  Well not in the glen anyway.  It is more sheltered here amongst the hills.  We don’t get the full blast of the south westerlies which crash into the coasts but we do get more than our fair share of rain.  Like life . . . what you lose on the proverbial swings you win on the roundabouts.  

The interest in the naming of storms seems to be abating.  The jokes about the names are even fizzling out in the newspaper website comments.  The next one will be called Clodagh which doesn’t have much scope for comedy.  Number two was Barney and someone asked whether we could expect to be inundated with pink dinosaurs.  He was immediately corrected  by another commenter who replied that Barney the cartoon dinosaur wasn’t pink . . .  he was purple and green!  

I remember the lurid dinosaur well.  He was a favourite of our eldest American granddaughter and much in evidence when we used to visit the Early Learning Centre in Douglas.  Modern children’s toys were rather a culture and colour shock for me.  I was brought up in the more pastel world of Beatrix Potter and Alison Uttley and was particularly fond of the illustrations of little British countryside animals.  I loved the original illustrations in the A. A. Milne books too but was never very fond of The Wind in the Willows.  The loud and obnoxious Mr Toad spoiled the book for me.  I have always had an aversion to loud and over-confident people.

Autumn is almost over and winter starts on Tuesday.  It hasn’t been very cold yet but the wet and windy spell continues.  I should be busy finishing off the autumn clear-up in the garden but the weather has turned wet and windy and I can't get motivated.  You will understand my reluctance to work in the garden if you read these comments on today's five day forecast from Ronaldsway:

Sat: Gales. Coastal overtopping of large waves near high tides.

Sun: Severe gales, with a risk of potentially damaging winds for a time (confidence in this low at present, please look for updates to forecast). Coastal overtopping near high tides, this quite severe.

Mon: Strong or gale force winds until later. Heavy rain, risk localised flooding.

Tues: Strong or gale force winds developing. Heavy rain, risk localised flooding.

Wed: Strong or gale force winds. Risk ice on highest roads later as it turns colder

So I am stuck inside with plenty of time to write but nothing to photograph and nothing to write about apart from the weather.  I think I need a new hobby . . . although there are little bits of brightness even on some of the cloudiest days.

We did go for two short walks about a week ago.  We just wandered up the tarred roads to the top of Fern Glen and up our branch of the glen to the entrance to the muddy footpath through the pheasant estate.

I took about half a dozen photos, none of great interest but the river was higher than usual.

And there were some golden beech leaves on branches overhanging the water.

Work was proceeding on the old barn, which is being converted, enlarged and turned into a modern home next door to Far End.

The sun came out briefly and lit up the remaining leaves on a nearby birch.

And the lions on the gateposts are still guarding the entrance to Fernside.  They always remind me of Betsy-Lee our crazy Schipperke who thought they looked very threatening and barked at them when she was a puppy.  I am not sure whether she realised that they represented big cats.   She had a tendency to hysteria and also barked at some white quartz stones at the side of the road outside Baytree Cottage.

I took this photo of the east side of Skyhill above our house from a field about half the way up the Fern Glen Road.  The bare pale grey branches of the ash trees trace the course of the little streams that trickle down the hillside.  Some of the water ends up running down the ditch through our garden.

Sunday

There are still a few colourful leaves on the big white flowering cherry but most have been ripped off by the wind and are littering the front lawn and the flower beds.

I started reading Håkan Nesser's latest book on Friday.  The first sentence appealed to me.  “The day before yesterday I decided that I would outlive my dog.  I owed him that.”  I felt I could identify with the narrator because I agree that we owe it to our dogs to outlive them.  The second paragraph starts “That is how I intend to pass the time from now on.  Make decisions, and stick to them.  It is not all that difficult, but harder than it sounds . . . “.   That resolution also appealed to me.  I am quite good at making decisions.  It is the sticking to them where I come unstuck.

During the non-gardening weather I have been spending far too much time reading the on-line newspapers and my first decision is that I must stop reading the opinion columns in the Guardian - and particularly the below the line comments.  There are mainly heated clashes between the right wing bigots (who should be reading the Daily Mail and only visit the website to annoy and the Guardianistas) and the left wing “professionally offended” types . . . with a few reasonable people caught in the crossfire.  I don’t know why they bother to argue.  Nobody ever shifts from their entrenched point of view.

As well as the repeated slanging matches about race, religion, politics and women’s lib, etc., etc.  the trending issue is gender identity politics.  It has a high profile because of a current fashion for claiming celebrity status by becoming a type of trans-person.  First Germaine Greer got into trouble for not being sympathetic enough.  I think she got rather irritated about the whole Bruce/Caitlin Jenner media frenzy.  Then a Guardian food writer, Jack Monroe, who used to be described as female announced in October that she wanted to be referred to as "transgender with a non-binary gender identity".  She/they has also asked to be referred to by the singular they pronoun, rather than "he" or "she".  It is all getting too much for my aging brain.  How can I avoid stepping into the linguistic elephant traps and causing offence.  How will I know who is going to be offended by being referred to as “he” or “she”  And grammar will be even more complicated.  Should I write "they have" or "they has" if I am referring to a singular non-binary person?  I thought it was bad enough when poor Benedict Cumberbatch stirred up a media hornets' nest by inadvertently referring to "coloured people" instead of the preferred "people of colour."  But I am beginning to think that the only solution in future may be not to say anything at all.  Total silence - that is the answer!

Autumn 11

Let us cultivate our garden . . . if the rain stops

Wednesday 18th November, 2015

Sunday 8th November was this sort of day . . . .

I tried to take an interesting photo of the nerines in the rain but the camera couldn’t decide whether to focus on the raindrops on the window or the flowers.

There was no chance of working outside in comfort.  The TV wasn’t tempting - too much bad news - so I had to make do with my own thoughts about finding the way through the confusing quagmire of twenty-first century misinformation.  The internet is a wonderful way of “thinking aloud” and a great way of searching for information but there is the inevitable downside.  It isn’t always easy to distinguish between fact and fiction, or fact and opinion.  From religious leaders and politicians to friends, everyone wants to persuade us to accept their prejudices and I include myself in “everyone”.   The reason for this train of thought was the arrival of one of those ubiquitous forwarded anti -“some one else's religion” messages that tell us far more about the sender than the subject they are ranting about.  There is no better way of annoying a grumpy old peacenik.

So how do I plan to find my way through the quagmire?  I don’t.  I shall just be a stick in the mud and refuse to believe that anyone knows “the whole truth”- including myself.  We can’t learn from history because we are only taught a distorted version of history.  We even lie to ourselves.  Our apparently well thought out “reasons” for doing something may just be excuses for doing something that we always wanted to do anyway.  I shall just try to follow the example of Candide.  If I receive any more of those forwarded message, I will send a forwarded standard reply - of his advice to his friends.  After listening to them arguing about whether this is the best of all possible worlds, the book ends with these words “Excellently observed” answered Candide “but let us cultivate our garden”. And cultivating our garden is what I will be doing as soon as the rain stops.

The rain continued on and off all week.  It did stop briefly on Wednesday and I took some late afternoon photos of the sunset and a pink-tinged jet which passed overhead on its way to North America.  It looked too big to be flying the UK/Ireland route.

We spent the first half of the week waiting for Abigail - our first officially named storm.  There was “an intense extratropical cyclone” in December 2011 which caused a lot of damage in Scotland and was named.  The Scots called it Hurricane Bawbag - but that was just a rude nickname. Contrary to the report in the Express, Abigail didn’t hit the British coast until Thursday and was so far north of us that we were hardly affected.  We would have just assumed that it was normal wet and windy November weather - if she hadn’t achieved celebrity status by being named.

Her name was allegedly voted for by the public but it sounds suspiciously like a name chosen by a crossword compiler . . . Clue: Girl’s name sounds like a big gale (7) although a cryptic crossword compiler would choose a suitably obscure synonym to make it tougher.

The only interesting things in the garden this week are some mushrooms/toadstools.  While I was cutting back meadowsweet on the wildflower bank I found a couple of little red ones which could be scarlet waxcaps.  I have seen them growing there in previous years and there are always just one or two.

Work in the garden keeps getting interrupted by the weather. The wildflower bank could be described as half-cut at present.  It is a slow process because I do it by hand with snips so that I can cut the thick meadowsweet and knapweed stems down to ground level without damaging the primroses, bugle and stitchwort too much.

The second group of mushrooms, which look rather like the illustration of oyster mushrooms in my book, are new to the garden.  They may be edible but I am not going to risk cooking them.

I have seen some similar ones up in the plantation under the old oak.  Ours are growing in a broken semi-circle around the edge of a golden yew on the north east side of the house possibly following the route of a root from a nearly Lawson’s cypress.  

The golden yew is the only survivor of a massacre of assorted small conifers which were planted before we bought the garden.  They were far too closely planted and too big to transplant by the time we realised that they weren’t dwarf conifers.  The only solution was to save the yew, which was the best of the assortment, and sacrifice the rest.

The sparrowhawk is back.  While I was washing breakfast mugs there was a loud thud as someone heavy hit the kitchen window.  I looked up  but hardly had time to focus on a fast disappearing bird at the top of the garden.  I was about 95% sure that it was a sparrowhawk.  After lunch I saw him/her again.  He flew towards the house but had learned from his earlier experience and did a quick U-turn before reaching the window.  This time I got a good view of his outspread tail feathers as he sped away.  I looked out of the dining room window to see whether he would come back and saw him perched in the hawthorns.  I dashed for my camera but he had disappeared before I got back to the window.

I am still trying to photograph the last rose.  This one wasn’t enjoying the weather and was swaying around in the wind,  trying to shelter from the rain under a leaf.  It probably isn’t the last last rose because I spied a small bud on Gentle Hermione.

On Monday the grass dried out enough for me to use the mower and I managed to cut both the front and the back.  It was a minor miracle.

And yesterday we were up early to drive to the Cottage Hospital for Tim’s monthly blood test.  The sun was just thinking about rising as we left.

It hadn’t risen yet when we turned north at Parliament Square.

. . . but when we arrived at the hospital it was already emerging over the Maughold peninsula and lighting up the town and the boating lake in the park below.

I often marvel at how easy it is to get things done in Ramsey.  It is just big enough to have nearly all of the amenities which we need but compact enough to have them all in walking distance.  We always drive to the dentist and hospital but we could walk in an emergency.  You can see the distinctive outline of Skyhill in the background - behind the spire of St Olave’s and the ginger cat drinking out of a bird bath.

Later, we returned to town to do some shopping and post a calendar to our American daughter. We passed the ominous Christmas tree that I photographed on my way to the hospital.  It is ominous because it will be a constant reminder that Christmas is approaching at the speed of a runaway train.  I am gradually opting out of the Christmas hysteria and the calendar will be the only thing that I post this year.  I gave our Canadian daughter her calendar when she visited us at the end of summer and our son is planning to come to the Island for Christmas.  But there is no escaping from the turkey.  Is there a word to describe the fear of roasting large birds?

And if Christmas comes can spring be far behind? Apparently not, shoots from the spring bulbs are already emerging. The first signs are spring are arriving well before Christmas.

PS  It is raining again this morning.

Autumn 10

More Keats than Shelley - or maybe not.

Saturday 7th November, 2015.

Only three more weeks of autumn.  At the end of the month the blog titles will switch from Autumn 13 to Winter 1 - and If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?   I don’t have the patience to memorise or even read poetry.  I have a sort of “best bits” attitude and the quotes that always come to mind at this time of year are from the odes - To Autumn and Ode to the West Wind - by Keats and Shelley.  We are still waiting for the wild west wind to strip the last of the leaves from the trees but the season of mists has arrived.

According to the local news there were no gales in October.  It was less windy, drier and sunnier than usual with only half the average rainfall for the month.  They only measured 53.6mm of rain at Ronaldsway, on the southeast coast of the Island, while we had 110mm in the glen.  It shows what a difference a few hills make.  But the “drier” weather may be over.  The view from our windows since the beginning of November has revealed a generally damp and often misty garden.

Monday.

The redwings left as suddenly as they arrived.  After publishing the last post, I went to look out of the window and all was eerily quiet on the holly front.  They must have suddenly decided that six days was a long enough holiday break and set off on their travels again.

Never mind, we still have the robins to entertain us.  Our boss robin that controls the territory around the bird feeders has been doing his utmost to chase away an inoffensive dunnock.  I knew robins defended their territories from other robins and even from artificial robins.  But I thought their aggression was triggered by the red colouring on the breasts.  Could we have a colour blind robin patrolling outside the kitchen window?  I Googled “robin attacks dunnock” and found that our robin is far from unique.  There were numerous photos and even some videos of dunnocks being mugged by robins. But I still don’t know why they pick on dunnocks and tolerate chaffinches and other birds of a similar size. Someone suggested that it may be because dunnocks have a robin-like shape or that robins think that dunnocks are trying to usurp their territory.

Tuesday:  The big news is the lack of news.   There are no newspapers in the shops today because dense fog at Heysham yesterday delayed the ferry docking.  Flights have been cancelled too.  We haven’t been affected as badly as the mainland where the three day fog has caused travel chaos.

On Sunday we drove out to tip in glorious sunshine.  Although the fog was already affecting the mainland, there was just a thin layer of hill fog clinging to the upper slopes of our mountains. Illuminated by backlighting from the sun, it looked as though the hills were covered with wispy brilliant white cottonwool.  I was disappointed that my camera was out of action while the battery was being charged.  I have been putting off getting a spare battery for years because I couldn’t decide whether to get the expensive Panasonic battery or a cheaper substitute. Then, while I was writing this paragraph, I was suddenly inspired to check battery prices on the internet and discovered that the Panasonic batteries for my model camera were being discontinued and Amazon was selling the last few that they had in stock at about half price.  So I ordered one immediately.  Now I shouldn’t miss another chance to photograph cottonwool hills.  

I took my camera when we drove out with another load of garden refuse this morning - hoping for more special fog effects.  But the air was very hazy today and the view towards the glen and the hills from the tip wasn’t very interesting.

Wednesday: It is damp and drizzly outside.   I should brave the weather and do some more work in the garden but it is too tempting to stay warm and look out of the window.  The nerines outside the window at the end of the living room, which always flower later than those in the back garden because they are shaded by a conifer and Barry’s oak, are flowering at last.  I leant out of the window to take this photo of the wettest nerine flower I have ever seen.

Thursday

It is raining again. We drove down to Douglas in the morning.  Tim was due for a check-up at the rheumatology department.  It was the usual type of appointment.  They were behind schedule and he had to wait an hour to see the doctor - just to be told to keep on taking the medication.

I tried to take photos of the autumn leaves along our route to the hospital but it wasn’t easy.  The combination of rain, windscreen wipers, reflections on the windscreen and a bumpy road conspired to ruin my attempts.  I tried my usual method - taking about sixty photos in the hope of getting at least one good one - but it didn’t work.  These are the least bad of a bad bunch.

I regretted Wednesday’s laziness because it rained most of the afternoon and the garden was neglected for the second day in a row.

Friday.

Not only is it raining but the wild west wind has arrived.  The five day forecast makes depressing reading.  I won’t go into all the gory details but there are predictions of “rain some heavy” and “strong winds at times” for every day.  Plus a few comments about “risk of localised flooding” and hill fog - just to add variety.

So I am sitting inside again, looking out of the window at a sodden, leaf strewn garden and wondering how long I can put off gardening in the rain.

I don’t read much American literature but I have been reading Anne Tyler’s latest book.  I started reading her books after visiting Raleigh, North Carolina, where she was born and where our daughters went to university.  One of the characters in A Spool of Blue Thread often recalls the day she fell in love with her husband and she always starts the story “It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow and green afternoon”.  This stuck in my mind because I was curious about the yellowness of the afternoon.  She isn’t referring to “fall colors” because the story is set in July and the only trees mentioned in the book are tulip poplars.  They do have yellow flowers but they flower in May.  Perhaps it was just the sun - but that is really only yellow in children’s pictures - or maybe the sun shining through the canopy of leaves.  Whatever!  On the same theme, our recent autumn afternoons have been sometimes bright, occasionally breezy, always beautiful, and definitely yellow and green. We seldom have a sudden drop of temperature in autumn.  The colder weather creeps up on us gradually and the trees and shrubs can have yellow and green leaves at the same time like this wisteria.

The rain held off for a while in the afternoon and I was able to cut back two muck buckets of very wet old growth on the wildflower bank before it got dark.

Saturday

I didn’t think it would be possible but it is even wetter than Friday.  The only reasonable break in the rain came too late in the afternoon to start work outside.  Even the birds have been in a bad mood. The siskins have been particularly quarrelsome.  It made me wonder whether Isaac Watts knew much about bird behaviour when he wrote:

"Whatever brawls disturb the street,

There should be peace at home;

Where sisters dwell, and brothers meet,

Quarrels should never come.

Birds in their little nests agree” etc.

As Isaac Watts, wrote about 150 hymns I doubt whether he had much time for birdwatching.  Earlier today, while I was watching a tiny goldcrest, searching for food in the hawthorns, I noticed that he had a companion.  As soon as they caught sight of each other, one flew at the other in a threatening way and chased it out of the tree.  It occurred to me that territorial birds differ from humans.  They are more likely to behave aggressively towards their own species or birds that resemble them while humans can have more of a problem with people who look “different”.

It has been too wet to go outside with a camera so I resorted to taking photographs through the various windows.  We have windows in three sides of the house.  There are three in the front, facing slightly more east than south as far as I can tell from the satellite image.  The most accurate description is probably east-southeast.  Also one at the end of the living room facing south-south west and three facing the back garden (wnw) which get the late afternoon sun (if there is any!)

I have numbered these collages starting from most northerly window at the back and moving in an anti-clockwise direction around the house.

1. From the study on a wet yellow and green day!

2. The kitchen window - featuring the bird feeders.

3. The dining room window.  Note:There are glass sliding doors at the end of the dining room which open into the “conservatory”. It is used for storing garden tools and junk and is not suitable for scrutiny.

4. The window at the end of the living room overlooking the “rose garden”.

1. The big living room window facing the road.

2. The spare bedroom window which looks out over the front steps and has a good view of the white flowering cherry and the wisteria and clematis.

3. The main bedroom window overlooking the very wet patio above the garage.

4. Reflections of the railings and ripples from the raindrops in the puddles.

PS.  Our weather is set to get even worse before it gets better.  We are expecting the UK’s first named storm - Abigail - to arrive on Sunday evening.  The Daily Express whose raison d'être appears to be printing warnings of imminent and dire catastrophes - often weather related - is in its element.  It claims “Britain to be smashed by WORST STORM for a YEAR this weekend” - but it is more than likely to be yet another example of the Express crying wolf.

Autumn 9

Redwings galore!

Monday 2nd November, 2015

It is Monday morning and I am behind schedule yet again.  It always seems as though the days are an hour shorter after the time change.  The extra hour of sunlight in the morning seems to pass unnoticed while the darker afternoons cut an hour off my gardening time.

This week’s excitement started on Tuesday evening when I noticed some frenzied bird activity in the big holly tree down by the road.  The tree is too far from the house to identify visiting birds with the naked eye so I took a photo using maximum zoom.  I thought they were probably  blackbirds starting to eat the holly berries.  The light was dim but just good enough to to get some slightly blurry images.  At first I thought that I had photographed a thrush but it didn’t look quite right.  Then I realised that it was a redwing!  I had only seen one once before during the twenty-five years we have lived here so I wasted a lot of time watching the tree for the next few days.  When the light was better I got a few slightly better photos.

When I got bored waiting for photographable redwings, I amused myself by taking an occasional photo of the autumn colours in lower Brookdale.

The redwing is a member of the thrush family and is slightly smaller than a song thrush.  They breed mainly in northern Europe (although a few breed in the north of Scotland) and migrate at this time of year.  Some remain in Britain for the winter while others travel further south.  Ours have been with us for nearly a week now.

I have tried to count them and have seen about eight flying out of the tree when they are disturbed - but one or more may have been blackbirds.  One of my photos shows two and a half redwings so I have photographic evidence of at least three.

Now the trees are losing their leaves I get a better view of some of our garden birds which shun the feeders and prefer to hunt for their own food.  A tiny goldcrest has been seen foraging in the trees behind the house for a few days now and on Thursday, while I was looking for the goldcrest, I saw a treecreeper on one of the hawthorns.

To return to my current obsession, the redwings appear to be holly berry gourmets.  I did see one redwing eating berries on the hawthorns behind the house but the holly berries are definitely their food of choice.  They appear to think the berries on some of the trees are tastier than others.  After they had spent nearly a week stripping the bumper crop from the tree by the road, a few switched to a tree at the edge of the plantation in our neighbours’ garden.  For some reason they are avoiding this  larger nearby tree in our garden which is laden with berries.

Last year the beech trees produced a huge amount of seed and I spent hours picking up the hard pods but this year they are resting and there are practically no pods.  It is the turn of the hollies to produce a prolific crop which is lucky for the flock of redwings.

Sunday was a lovely day, weather-wise.  Better than we could hope for at the beginning of November.  It started with a cool morning - and when I say “cool” I am talking about the temperature and not using the word in the sense of the younger generation’s ubiquitous expression of approval.  I went out to photograph the bright blue sky and saw that the moon was still visible above Skyhill.  I was standing under the tree by the bird feeder taking photographs and could hear the little birds fluttering around impatiently overhead.  Then something landed on my woolly hat - and it wasn’t a drop of rain.  I went in to wipe off the little dropping and had a cup to tea.  When I returned to take more photos, the moon was just about to disappear behind the hill.

When we drove out to the tip on the northern plain we could see that the moon was still high above the horizon.  We have shorter hours of sunlight - and moonlight - in the glen because it takes some time for the sun and moon to appear from behind North Barrule in the east and we lose sight of them behind Skyhill quite early.  The glen is shaded by the hill in the afternoon while most of the Island is still bathed in sunlight.  But I think we are on the better side of the glen.  We benefit from the morning sun earlier than the houses across the river.  The sun lights up the top of Skyhill first and then the sunlight gradually creeps down the plantation until it reaches our back garden.

In the afternoons we have a lovely view of the last rays of sunshine illuminating the trees in Brookdale plantation across the river.

We also see the best of the sunrises, and very occasionally, when there must be a spectacular sunset hidden behind Skyhill, there are some pastel pretty evening clouds.

We haven’t seen the little female siskin with the damaged leg for a few days now.  She was a regular visitor to the niger feeder for a few weeks.  She may have recovered the use of her leg or moved south but I am not optimistic about her fate.  It is a tough life out there for little birds.  This able-bodied female siskin was puffed up, presumably to ward off the chill in the air.

I checked the rain gauge on Sunday morning.  We had 110mm (4.33 inches) of rain during October. Not an insignificant amount unless you compare it with October last year when 297mm (over 11 inches) of rain fell in the glen.

Earlier this week, I received an email from a friend in Tasmania with some photos.  One photo was of the mossy base of a very old tree with some intriguing holes among the gnarled roots.  I thought “I wonder whether that is where the little people live” and when I scrolled down to her comment I found that she had exactly the same thought. I replied saying “We have some mysterious holes in the bank below the holly trees at the top of the garden - possible excavated by wood mice and then abandoned.  I sometimes wonder whether some of our bumblebees live there.  Apparently they do set up home in old mouse holes.  The dogs used to dig holes in the bank - probably trying to get at the mice - which made a mess.  But the mice live in peace now apart from the danger of being caught by trespassing cats.”  I went up to check on the holes but the ivy is thicker now that there is no dog damage and I only found one under the roots of an old holly.  I think it is currently inhabited because there is some loose earth outside the entrance, evidence of recent excavation.

While I was up at the top of the garden I found some autumn colour on a little seedling rowan.  

We have a much larger rowan, also a seedling, nearer the house but it never puts on a display like this.  The only other rowan is a very old one on the bank above which is weighed down with wild honeysuckle and looks as though it may eventually collapse.  I cut back some of the heavier branches to reduce the weight so it may last a few more years.

Further along the bank I saw this fungus - probably a common earthball.

And from the top of the bank I got a good view of Barry’s oak tree.  

The property on our southern side has had two owners since Barry left but I still think of it as his garden.  He retired to the Island after working for many years in the middle east and created the garden.  It is full of interesting trees and plants but is too big to be easily maintained.   Barry told me about the oak tree many years ago but I cannot remember the details.  I vaguely recall that he planted an acorn which he picked up somewhere - and that he thought the tree was a hybrid.  The leaves are much larger than those on the “real” oaks up in the plantation.  The larger ones can be up to six inches long - and most of them blow into our garden!  So I have mixed feelings about that oak.

I had to remove a few oak leaves from this mahonia flower before taking the next photo.

And my last photo is of a couple of fuchsia flowers - all dressed up and nowhere to go.