19 to 26 June

Summer days . . . with a flashback to Spring.

Sunday 26th June, 2016

I am starting to write this on Thursday and I can’t remember what I did earlier in the week. So I will have to look for clues in my list of weather forecasts and walks which I update every morning - and in my photos.  It helps having a digital camera that dates all the photos.

No photos on Sunday, and no walk - just a note “rained all afternoon”.  So no gardening either.

Monday.  I felt virtuous because I did the second session of cutting up rowan and honeysuckle.

We did walk - but just along the roads at the top of the glen and I didn’t find anything to photograph.  After we returned home I took a few photos of this female or juvenile siskin on the back lawn.  Siskins are almost the most common birds in our garden now but I was interested because her behaviour was unusual.  It was the first time I have seen a siskin searching for food on the grass.  I can only guess that she was finding ants - possibly some early flying ants are emerging from underground nests in the back garden.

Tuesday is a regular shopping day.  We didn’t walk after we returned home - partly because Tim had hay fever symptoms after the previous day’s walk and partly because I wanted to finish clearing the rowan and honeysuckle debris.  I did it all apart from a little dying honeysuckle twined around a small upright rowan branch.  It is hard to reach so I will tackle it later.  I may be able to reach it with the extending Snapper - a rather clever device best described a secateur blades on the end of a pole.

Wednesday I can remember without assistance from the computer and camera. In the morning I achieved more than usual in the garden.  First I trimmed back the wisteria and clematis shoots by the front steps and swept the patio and steps.  Then I cut back some of the raspberries which were encroaching under the Kowhai tree and enlarged the cleared area under the bird feeder.  And finally, I fixed up another section of old trellis.  We found the pieces of trellis with some other rubbish at the top corner of the garden.  I think they had been discarded by a previous neighbour.  I retrieved them and used them initially as a support for the raspberries.  They had been languishing at the top of the garden ever since Tim made a proper frame for tying up the raspberry canes.  Last spring (2015), I recycled a couple of pieces to fence the top south corner of the garden and, a few months ago, I brought the rest down to (hopefully) provide some protection, from lurking cats and swooping sparrowhawks, for the birds using the feeder.

After lunch we walked down to the Whitebridge hoping to encounter less pollen on this route.  We didn’t walk through the grassy park . . . just walked over the bridge and turned back. I stopped to photograph a mallow flower next to the pavement leading to the bridge and was nearly mowed down by a young man in a mobility scooter who was taking his dog for a walk.  I am usually careful to keep out of the way of these vehicles which must be a life-saver to their users but I didn’t hear it approaching over the bridge and wasn’t expecting “traffic” on the pavement.  Luckily the driver called out and I was able to move out of the way just in time.  The object of my interest was a common mallow I think - not worth risking life and limb for a photo but quite pretty.

On the way home, I paused to look at the river above the weir.  There are sometimes little fish, probably young trout, in the water there.  There were no fish but I disturbed a party of male mallards which were sunbathing on the warm concrete.  They took to the water and the flotilla headed upstream in an orderly fashion.

There are some new flowers in the garden.  The peonies are doing well . . .

. . . and there are more roses - plump Gentle Hermione . . .

. . . and sprays of little Cornelia roses.

Thursday.  We haven’t seen the trespassing cat lurking under the raspberries this week but Tim chased a couple of yowling cats out of the garden this morning.  They have started fighting over ownership of our property.

I mowed the grass.  It is only five days since I last mowed but there were rumours of showers overnight and on Friday so I decided to take advantage of the hot dry weather.  While I was mowing near the apple trees I saw my first meadow brown butterfly of the year.  The upperwing was a dark brown so it must have been a male.  There was also a speckled wood flying around but we have seen plenty of them.  They have been the most common butterflies in the garden so far this year - apart from the unidentified whites which are probably mainly, if not all, green veined whites.

It was very hot, not ideal mowing weather.  This blackbird, an adult female I think, had a better idea and was enjoying the heat, sunbathing on the back lawn.  

The blackbirds must have a second batch of babies because they are collecting food again even though the first lot have fledged.

We spent Friday recovering from the night before. Tim was tired because he stayed up late and woke early to find out the results of the referendum. We put off the shopping until Saturday while we tried to make sense of the news on the TV.

I had been ignoring all the negative referendum campaigning to the best of my ability and blithely assumed that most people would just vote for the status quo.  Well I couldn’t have been more wrong.  It was probably the closest the British will ever come to having a revolution.  The prime minister announced his resignation and the right wing of the Labour Party seized the opportunity to oust the leader of their party.  They haven’t quite succeeded yet but the momentum is growing.  All the politicians are squabbling over power.  It isn’t very dignified - rather like the chaffinches quarrelling over the sunflower seeds . . . but more unpleasant.

I think I will distract myself by retreating back to calmer times in early spring.  There was a gap of about two months in the posts, when nothing much was happening.  When I started again, I intended to write a catch-up post to fill in the gap . . . but like many of my good intentions I kept procrastinating.  So here are a few spring memories.  First a reminder of the lingering cold weather which seems such a distant memory now . . . the last sprinkling of snow on North Barrule.

Then, to set the mood, a photo of some cute lambs - pity about the graffiti!

This is the view of the lambs’ field from Skyhill.

And you can’t have spring in the glen without daffodils.

There were some other spring flowers including this unusually pale snakeshead fritillary.

I was delighted in early April when I found a few tiny flowers on the blackthorn that I planted near the “waterfall”.  

The other blackthorn plant, in the top corner of the garden is also doing well but just grew a healthy crop of leaves.

We were also delighted to see that the great tits were using the nest box after abandoning their nest before laying eggs in 2015.

But unfortunately it turned out to be a repeat of 2015,  After taking nesting material into the box they left without producing any eggs for the second year in succession.  They haven’t been near the box for weeks now.   It was a lot of wasted work on the part of the female great tit because the completed nest was 4 and a half inches square and just over four inches deep.  It is mainly moss and and conifer needles with a lining of hair and fluff on top.

I had a look on the internet after taking that photo, to see if I could find out any information on the reasons that birds abandon nests and discovered that I had accidentally broken the law by removing the abandoned nest from the box.  Apparently it is illegal to clean out nest boxes before the end of the breeding season (which is at the end of July) even if they contain abandoned eggs or dead nestlings.  Perhaps I should replace the old nest.

I think I will try moving the nest box to a more secure place before next spring - possibly high up on the front wall of the summerhouse. All the trespassing cats in the garden may be worrying the great tits.  The tits raised babies in the box every year before the people with multiple cats moved into the house across the road.

There was one other bird incident in spring.  This time with a happy ending.  We heard a bird crash into the dining room window.  I went outside, half expecting to find a body on the path behind the house, and discovered a female chaffinch.  She was sitting up but was obviously stunned so I picked her up and took her inside to recover.  When I took her into the living room to show Tim, she closed her eyes and collapsed.  I thought she had died but she was still breathing and gradually revived.  I can only assume that she fainted.  It had never occurred to me that a bird could faint from shock.  As soon as she started to struggle in my hand I took her outside and she perched in the azalea mollis for a while before flying away.

And finally, I have photos from the last couple of days of two juvenile tits.

First a young blue tit which still has its yellow cheeks and grey head.

And also a young great tit.  I have seen two visiting the feeder, so at least one pair of great tits must have succeeded in raising a family somewhere nearby.

12 to 18 June

Waiting . . .  first for rain and then for dry grass.

Sunday 19th June, 2016.

Last Sunday I spent most of the day inside avoiding the midges and waiting for rain.  There were eventually a few drops in the late afternoon but barely enough to wet the surface.  

Monday was better though.  We had half an inch in the north of the Island.  I was very happy.   It was getting depressing looking out of the windows and seeing thirsty plants.

We were also happy to see the first of this season’s baby birds visiting the feeder.  Early in the morning there was a siskin fledgling on the ground frantically quivering its wings while its father was eating niger seed.  After being fed it flew off.  In the afternoon there was another male siskin being targeted by two babies.  It is difficult to tell the difference between fledglings and females so we can only be sure by observing their behaviour.  I have cleaned the kitchen window and will keep the camera handy in case we see any more youngsters.

On Tuesday morning there was more lovely rain but it cleared up in the afternoon.   It wasn’t a deluge but it was enough to give the ground a good wetting - about 20mm over two days.  I didn’t go out in the garden as it was too damp and midgy but I enjoyed watching some more baby birds visiting the feeder.  There were at least four types of fledgling  - a siskin again, a chaffinch, a coal tit and a blue tit.  There may have been a great tit too because I saw a parent taking food up into the tree but any babies were too high for me to see.

I am wondering whether it is possible to distinguish young siskins from the adults by checking the length of the tail feathers.  I am sure that this “short-tailed” siskin is a fledgling because I saw it begging for food and being ignored by the adults on the niger feeder.  

Then it got bored and flew down onto the trellis and I got an even better view of its abbreviated tail.  

And finally it got tired of waiting for hand-outs and decided to try feeding itself on the ground.

The niger seed is rather messy.  I bought a special niger feeder with small holes, and suspended a plastic “saucer” underneath to catch some of the seed with spills out of the holes, but most of the seed still seems to end up on the ground . . .  except when it is wet and sticks to everything.

This young coal tit and the chaffinch were both waiting for food up in the tree while their parents were busy on the feeders.

While I was watching the babies, I saw a scruffy robin and couldn’t decide whether he was having a very early moult or whether he was just very wet.  It must have been the latter because later in the week our back garden robins were all looking sleek again.

On Wednesday I found that I wasn’t the only person with an interest in baby birds.  

That unwelcome visitor was spotted lurking under the raspberries.  I chased it away at least half a dozen times but it kept returning even after I watered the raspberries hoping that the wet foliage would put it off.  I worry about the vulnerable baby birds, especially the siskins which often feed on the ground.  I wonder whether the local toy shop stocks powerful water pistols.

In the evening I saw a much bigger “baby” - a young blackbird which had already learned to find its own food.  It was working at the edge of the lawn for ages.  I couldn’t see whether it was pulling at a worm or wiping a slug to remove the slime.

Thursday.  I was planning to mow but there was an overnight shower and not enough wind to dry out the grass so I had a good excuse to put it off until tomorrow.  Instead, I shall have to cut up bits of tree and creeper that have been littering the top of the garden since I murdered the old rowan last week.  I started yesterday but it is probably a three-day task.  I can’t cut up more than three muck buckets of bits without risking blistered hands and a sore back.

As soon as I finish clearing up the debris from the old rowan, I am planning to modify my “bird feeding enclosure” and block off the view of the birds from the raspberry bed.   But mowing will have to take precedence over everything on the first properly dry day.

We got a letter from the Department of Infrastructure this morning to let us know that our road will be closed from its junction with the Glen Auldyn Road from Monday July 4 until Friday August 12  because they “intend to carry out essential river bank stabilisation works to the highway of Glen Auldyn Back Road.”   This is a bit confusing because the river bank repairs were apparently finished early in spring. Perhaps the earlier repairs were just a temporary fix and they are going to do a definitive job.

The letter continues with the assurance that they “will endeavour to maintain residents’ vehicle access between 16-30 and 09-30 hours and wherever possible, pedestrian access will be available at all times during the works.”  The first section of road between the bridge and our cluster of houses is nowhere near the river bank.  I hope the slightly ambiguous wherever possible means that they will allow us access during the day.

It must be summer even though it is only 14 degrees C today because the ox-eye daisies and foxgloves are flowering.  They self-seed and do a good job of hiding the unsightly dead leaves of the daffodils when they die back.  If you aren’t too fussy about tidiness, large areas of a garden can be left to take care of themselves.

Lush double roses are already flowering in sunnier gardens in the glen and they are gorgeous but sometimes I prefer the lovely delicate simplicity of the wild roses.

Friday, and another overnight shower wet the grass too much for morning mowing.  I took this photograph and wrote to a friend saying “I seem to be spending the week waiting for the grass to dry out enough to be mowed.  But I can't complain when I have this view to enjoy from our kitchen window.  Everything is growing so fast this year.  Some of the foxgloves are almost as tall as me.  I am so lucky to have all this space in this crowded world.”

We did the shopping and recycling before morning tea and then walked down to Poyll Dooey after lunch. As we walked down the last stretch of road towards Greenlands, I noticed that the two big trees, in an overgrown field, which I photographed in winter . . .

. . . were now in full leaf.  

In winter I speculated that they might be oaks, judging by the shape and the fissured  bark of the closer one, but I was wrong.  In spring I saw that it was covered with unoaklike catkins.

I wondered whether it could be an alder although it was far larger than any other alder I have ever seen.  The gate was open so I walked into the field to have a closer look.  It was indeed an alder.  There were still a few of  the distinctive little cones from the previous year clinging to the lower branches.   The second tree, which was half-hidden behind the alder, is just a sycamore.

Near the footbridge we came across a patch of perennial sweet peas  Lathyrus latifolius  They have no scent and are garden escapes, not native wildflowers, but they are very beautiful.  This patch has been flowering every June for as long as I can remember.

We last visited Poyll Dooey three weeks ago.  In the park the trees were leafier and the wild, unmown areas were wilder.  There were some lovely patches of meadow cranesbill a native wildflower.  

They are probably a distant ancestor of the blue perennial geraniums in my garden.  My geraniums are a mauvy blue, purple really, but the colour never looks right in a photograph.  The pink tinge in this photo is due to the sun shining through the petals.

Before we left the park I took a photo of this patch of white umbellifers.  I wasn’t sure what they were.  When I got home I found out that I was fortunate not to recognise them because they are ground elder which is a very invasive, although pretty, weed. It is almost impossible to eradicate because it grows back from the tiniest fragment of root.  

Saturday was the end of the sequence of “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . .” days and I finally got the grass mowed.  Now I can relax until next week,

4 to 11 June

It is all over . . . until next time.

Saturday 11th June 2016.

The official racing is over - on the TT course at least -  although there are some post-TT races in the south of the Island.  It is a bit anticlimatic but there are still fans around and they try to keep the stragglers entertained because it  takes a few days to get all the visiting bikes back to the mainland on the ferries.  But  most of the frenzied lapping of the course is over, there will only be a few visitors left on Sunday and on Monday the signage on the Mountain Road will be changed and it will revert to two way traffic.

The TT fans couldn’t really complain about the weather this year.  It was mainly hot and dry and no races were cancelled although there were delays caused by fog and accidents.  The bikes are so ridiculously fast now that visibility and road conditions have to be as near ideal as possible.  Not an easy task when the races are run over 37 miles of public roads in notoriously changeable weather.  This was our view towards North Barrule on Wednesday.

Our son flew up from London to watch some of the races but apart from two nerve-wracking drives down to the airport and some early morning shopping in Ramsey, I spent the whole of race week in the house and garden - mostly in the house.  It was too hot to enjoy working  outside but I did manage to do some hedge trimming and mowed the grass on Wednesday.

Early on Thursday morning, I walked into the kitchen and couldn’t believe my eyes.  The back lawn looked as though it was sprinkled with soft hail pellets.

Then there was a gust of wind and a flurry of petals from the hawthorn rained down and my sleepy brain started to function.  The combination of abundant flowers, hot weather and then a stiff breeze had caused an unusually sudden petal drop.  The trees were an absolute picture this year but the flowers didn’t last long in the heat.  This photo was taken on the 1st of June when they were at their best  . . .

. . . and ten days later all that remained was the promise of a bumper crop of haws for the blackbirds in the autumn.  

But I prefer to forget the sweet sorrow of beauties past and enjoy the present.  The pale pink  wild roses that climb up through the hawthorns are flowering - although the petals are dropping almost as soon as the flowers open.

And the foxgloves are opening.  This group look rather good against the silver leaves of the senecio.

And above the summerhouse there is a profusion of small pink Cécile Brunner roses.

We have changed tactics as far as bird feeders are concerned.  The little birds loved eating sunflower seeds out of the mesh bowl on the feeder but unfortunately Number 2 Ratty started climbing up the pole regularly to steal seeds and the birds were too frightened to eat when he was there.  So I got out an old feeder that our American daughter gave us years ago.  I used to use it for wild bird seed but that wasn’t popular with our gourmand birds and tended to be ignored, get wet and the seeds started sprouting in the feeder.  So I cleaned out the feeder, put it away and forgot about it.  Then it occurred to me that it might do for sunflower seeds.  Tim put it up and we had an amusing morning watching the birds approach and then veer away in horror when they realised that it was “different” and therefore potentially dangerous.  By the next morning all was well and they were eating happily out of the new device.

Number 2 Ratty is still lurking around. We saw him once in the empty mesh basket and a couple of times scavenging on the ground.  I don’t mind him eating the bits that the birds drop.

About six weeks ago the bird feeding area had a make-over. We enjoy watching the birds and I am sure they like having a source of regular food but I am also aware that the concentration of birds attracts the attention of predators.  

I added some more old pieces of trellis next to the one that I leant against the tree to support the little white clematis, put some paving slabs under the feeder and then used some panels from an old compost bin to make a barricade on either side to stop cats from crouching under nearby plants and pouncing on ground feeding birds.  The cats can still jump up from the path below but the birds have a better chance of seeing them.   The small birds fly through the large gaps in the trellis but it may deter sparrow hawks and slow down predatory cats.

I took another photo this week.  It is always a surprise to see how fast plants grow in spring.

I had a very tiring day on Friday.  A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the remaining branches of an old rowan tree which grows on the bank above the stream were leaning at an alarming angle.

This tree has been a problem for years.  I have lost count of the number of times that we have trimmed low hanging branches.  A few years ago I cut back the heaviest branches and hoped that would solve the problem - once and for all.  But the remaining branches didn’t grow upright.  Part of the reason for the slant was that they were trying to grow towards the light - the other part of the problem was that they were being weighed down by a tangle of honeysuckle.  Now I like rowans and I love honeysuckle but I don’t like trees that are threatening to collapse and bring part of the bank down with them.  Particularly if that part of the bank is likely to fall into the stream and cause a flood.  This isn’t a realistic danger in summer but in the autumn and winter with floods and gales anything is possible.  So the only solution was to cut back the branches to about a foot above ground level and see whether any of the new shoots would grow upright.

It wasn’t easy because I wanted the three branches to come down separately to minimise damage on the plants below - but the honeysuckle was living up to its old name Woodbine and I had to disentangle it first. I spent so long looking up at the overhead tangle of stems that I eventually lost my balance and toppled over backwards.  It reminded me of the story about penguins falling over backwards when planes and helicopters pass overhead.  Not true, sadly.  Penguins obviously have better balance than old women.  Here is an “after” photo - of the space where the tree used to be.

It looks as though the job is finished but, unfortunately I have only finished phase one.  Behind all the ferns, fuchsia and rhododendron is a pile of rowan branches and honeysuckle that needs to be cut up and moved. I couldn’t clear up while I was cutting because I was hurrying to get the electric saw phase over on Friday before the rain which was forecast to fall overnight.  I am rather neurotic about using power tools in damp conditions.

I don’t feel too bad about cutting back the old tree because we have one of its children growing in the garden.  This rowan came up from seed in one of our daffodil beds.

I removed the lower branches to raise the canopy so there is enough light for the daffs which are followed by this mess of Welsh poppies and small semi-wild aquilegia.

It has been a weird spring.  At first we thought the cold, wet, wintry weather would last forever.  And then we suddenly switched from complaining about the cold to complaining about the heat.  And now, after a series of hot sunny days we are waiting anxiously for some rain for the garden.  Parts of the mainland have had flash floods but all the lovely rain clouds seem to be avoiding the Island.  We have had a little light patchy rain but the garden really needs a good soaking.

The wisteria leaves loved the hot sunshine and grew so abundantly that they smothered nearly all the flowers.

Some of the shrubs, like the lilac and weigela have also enjoyed the heat.  I always thought that our purple lilac was rather lacking in scent compared with the common lilac but its scent is quite strong on a hot day.

Another surprisingly sweet scented shrub is this yellow deciduous azalea - R luteum.  It used to have an orange companion which gradually died back and finally expired.  They weren’t growing in an ideal situation as they had been planted at the edge of the ditch and too close to a massive Lawson’s cypress.  But they were too old to transplant when we bought the property.

But if you asked the local bumble bees to name their favourite flower in our garden.  I think they would choose this common sage which dominates our herb patch.  It is buzzing all day.