June/July

The last week of June and the first week of July

Sunday 10th July 2016

The last week of June was one of those weeks that are best forgotten - or at least filed away in the deepest. darkest  recesses of one’s mind.  On Monday there was a totally unexpected power failure.  Then, sometime between Monday afternoon and Wednesday morning, our old fridge developed a terminal illness.  I thought the fridge was warmer than usual but didn’t realise what was happening until I discovered that the frozen chicken breasts, that I intended thawing for supper on Wednesday, had already started thawing.  Luckily most of the bulkier items in the freezer compartment were still frozen solid so I assumed it would be safe to transfer them to the chest freezer in the basement.

Then I went through my usual panic about whether I should phone for a repairman or just buy a new appliance.  Judging by the symptoms and advice on the internet, it appeared that the compressor was faulty - possibly a problem with the bearings which were causing the compressor to overheat and switch off.  It sounded too expensive a repair for an aging fridge.  The next snag was that no one on the Island appeared to stock a fridge the same size as our old one which fitted in the kitchen nicely and was the absolute minimum size for our requirements.  So we had to order a slightly bigger fridge - and then cope without a fridge for two days because the new one couldn’t be delivered until Friday.

I managed to keep the essentials cool enough by using the old fridge as a cold box and putting bottles of frozen water in with the food to keep it cool.  We also had a large picnic coldbox which was useful.  But all this was time consuming and the garden was forgotten.  

On Thursday things got worse.  To distract myself from fridge problems, I decided to clean behind the computer desk.  After vacuuming up years of accumulated dust and cobwebs, I plugged everything in again - but the monitor wouldn’t come on.  It was absolutely dead - even the little pilot light was off.  I unplugged everything, plugged it all in again, checked the fuses - nothing helped.  I wondered whether the adaptor cable had been damaged when I moved the desk and took it to Ramsey to see whether I could get a replacement.  

The young man in the first shop couldn’t help so I tried a little computer repair shop in Parliament street and a very nice young man there checked the adaptor cable for me and said it was working OK.  There must be some other problem.  So I went home and checked everything again without success.  Finally I wondered whether the computer had stopped “talking to” the monitor for some obscure reason and that the monitor needed resetting manually.  I found an on/off button below the screen that I had forgotten about because I always leave the monitor on standby.  I pressed the button and the screen lit up like magic.  I suspect that I must have accidentally depressed the button when I was dusting or moving the monitor.  Thank goodness I didn’t get someone around to “fix it”.  I can just imagine the scene.  The stupid old woman being politely told that monitors usually work better if they are not switched off!  It would have been so embarrassing.

But the week wasn’t over yet.  Friday happened to be our 55th wedding anniversary.  Birthdays and anniversaries are always an uncomfortable reminder of the passing years and the fact that I am older than I feel. The new fridge arrived as promised.  But after the delivery men left I started worrying that it wasn’t cooling down enough.  I had a little fridge and freezer thermometer and it kept reading about 15 degrees C.  Eventually I tried an old but reliable thermometer that we have in the living room and discovered that the fridge was fine . . . the fridge/freezer thermometer was faulty.  Another panic over but I couldn’t relax in the kitchen for a few days - partly because it seemed to have shrunk (the new fridge took up more space) and partly because the new fridge smelt different so I was reminded of its presence every time I walked in the door!

I did no work in the garden all week - apart from mowing the grass on Sunday.  Even my camera was largely ignored.  By the end of the week the only photograph that I had taken was a rather boring shot of my variegated thyme that I emailed to a cyber friend after power was restored on Monday.

July has been better . . . so far.  I wandered around the garden on Saturday in search of interesting flowers and found a few pretty weeds.  I really like this slender St John’s wort (Hypericum pulchrum).  It thrives in the drier sunnier parts of the garden.

Down by the gate there are patches of plants.  Most of them are not strictly weeds - unless you define weeds as being “plants in the wrong place”.  They have mainly self-seeded from other parts of the garden.  Nothing much grew in the dense shade here until the big beech tree by the gate was cut down.  Now the area under the cypress gets more light and there is a mixture of campanula, centranthus, feverfew, foxgloves and orange hawkbit and white clover flowering there - as well as some shrubs which were probably “planted” by the birds . . . cotoneaster, berberis, broom and even a small bay tree.

On the other side of the drive there is a lot of centranthus which should be attracting butterflies but we have seen very few this year although Tim did see one which was “too orange to be a speckled wood” near the gate when he went down to fetch the post.

There are some “proper” flowers in the garden too - mainly on flowering shrubs.  The senecio in the back garden is flowering.  It provides a bright splash of colour but doesn’t combine too well with the foxgloves which look better against the silvery leaves of the shrub before the flowers open.

But the bumblebees don’t care about colour combinations.  They value  flowers which are a source of pollen and nectar.

This neat little hebe has a some flowers on the sunnier side of the shrub.  It didn’t flower for years - until I moved it to a sunnier position.  Now the nearby rowan tree has grown and is shading one side of the shrub but it is too big to move again.  It has produced a crop of offspring but none of them have flowered yet.

I am sure the plant was supposed to have pink flowers but you can see from this magnified photo of the flowers that they are white although the anthers are bright mauve.  I wonder whether the seedlings will be identical.  I had another type of white hebe which produced mainly white flower children but also a few pink ones.

This fuchsia has the same colour scheme as the fuchsia magellanica, which escaped from gardens and now grows wild on the Island, but the flowers are much larger.  I found it growing up at the top of the garden and expect a cutting discarded by our previous neighbour took root up there.  It dies back almost to ground level during cold winters but has enjoyed the last two years.

This Deutzia  which I bought after admiring a plant in our neighbours’ garden could be Deutzia scabra “Codsall Pink” but its label was lost years ago and I think it may just have been labelled Deutzia anyway.  It is one of the few flowers that looks better facing away from the camera. I had to bring a sprig inside for a photo session because the wind came up and I couldn't focus on a moving target.

On Saturday there were also a couple of sightings of birds which we don’t often see outside the kitchen.  We have had a number of brief visits from this female greenfinch this year and I finally managed to get a photo.  Last year a pair visited the feeder but this year she has only been seen on her own.

Stop press - Saturday the 9th!  Less than an hour after I wrote about the female greenfinch being seen on her own this year I walked into the kitchen and saw a male eating peanuts. There was no sign of the female.  It is odd because they always came to the feeder together last year.  I am glad this year's female has a handsome friend and isn’t the only greenfinch in the glen.

Another bird which must live nearby, but isn’t often seen because it doesn’t visit the feeder, is the little wren.  We occasionally see one in the back garden searching for small insects in the moss on the wall or in cracks in the bark on the tree.

A couple of days later there was an even more unusual sighting but unfortunately no photo.  I was reading and Tim saw a small bird perched on the wooden fence.  He called me but by the time I had found the right glasses, it had fluttered down into the roses.  I got a good enough view to identify it as a newly fledged black cap before it flew over the hedge into the next door garden.

On Sunday I mowed and then I devoted a few days to trimming the edges of the grass and cutting back the road hedge.  I wanted to finish the road side of the hedge before work starts on our road and heavy vehicles roar up and down endangering life and limb.  Work on river bank stabilisation was supposed to start on Monday but nothing has happened yet on our Glen Auldyn back road, although there has been activity up near the top of Fern Glen.

The good news is that two of our neighbours contacted the Department of Infrastructure about access to our properties while the road is “closed” and were told that it was all right for residents at this end of the road to ignore the road closed signs.  Apparently the whole road is officially closed in case there is any damage to the surface.  The department doesn’t want to be sued if someone falls into a pothole . . .  but we can use the road “at our own risk”.

There is a lot that should be done in the garden but procrastination is more likely than activity.  I would like to trim the Leylandii hedge after I have finished the last bits of the road hedge.  The main holly hedge can be left until the big autumn clear up which will start after our American family leave in the middle of August.  With a bit of luck I may finish cutting back the ferns and ivy and trimming the holly hedge before my sister visits in September.  Then the wildflower bank, as well as all the old growth on the perennials like the oregano, campanula, etc, will need to be cut cut back . . . and I am trying to avoid thinking about the inevitable drifts of wet autumn leaves.

Our walks have been limited recently to the top of the glen roads.  On Thursday we saw the first evidence that work on the river bank stabilisation had started - not far below the turning circle at the top of the Fern Glen road.  The temporary post, wire and rubble structure which was erected after a section of the road was undermined during the winter floods had been removed and a foundation for a permanent section of wall had been laid.

On Friday we walked up again and saw that the wall was already in place so I took my camera up there on Saturday afternoon to record progress.

The blocks which they are using must be extremely heavy.  There is still a bit of finishing off to do and the road will need to be resurfaced but it shouldn’t be long before they start working on our road.

When we returned from our tour of inspection I saw the first baby robin of the season.  It was investigating the bird feeding area but was a bit scared of the other birds.