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.