Summer 7

Spring cleaning, computer stress, visitors and some Jekyll and Hyde weather.

Monday 3rd August, 2015.

The week started with two consecutive wet days which was lucky as far as the “spring” cleaning was concerned.  It rained hard for most of Sunday.  Monday was mainly cloudy and drizzly but too damp to be pleasant working outside.

On Monday morning I noticed some birds up in the meadowsweet near the summerhouse and got the binoculars to have a closer look.  They turned out to be two blackcaps - a female that was feeding a young fledgling.  Unfortunately they were too far away to photograph.  While I was watching I saw some chaffinches and a blackbird apparently eating ants at the top of the lawn.  They may have been picking up flying ants emerging from the nests up there.  This is the time of year when the flying ants embark on their mating flights.  Every now and then one of the chaffinches would writhe on the ground - possibly trying to dislodge biting ants - and that was very nearly the sum total of my garden birdwatching for the week.  

The spring cleaning should have been spread out over the rest of the week but it ran into a major glitch on Wednesday.  The upgrade to Windows 10 was released and my computer tried to upgrade via the update system and kept failing.  I wasn’t sure how to stop these upgrade attempts so I tried to update manually but I think I may have used command prompt instead of command prompt as admin.  After downloading, etc for well over an hour it failed again.  So I had yet another bash.  This time I used a recommended download tool.  It took most of the afternoon but eventually I ended up with Windows 10.  My nerves were shattered though . . . and I had wasted an entire day which should have been devoted to house cleaning.

By Friday, the house was more or less acceptable - and I drove down to Ronaldsway to meet the morning flight from Dublin.  Our Canadian daughter and her three girls arrived on time.  They were utterly exhausted after a sleepless night on the transatlantic flight from Toronto and spent the afternoon catching up on some much needed sleep.

Saturday was a sunny day. The forecast predicted that it might be the only sunny day of the week so we went for a short scenic walk in the afternoon.

We drove to Maughold village and walked through the churchyard.  Before heading down to the coast, I paused to take a photo over the churchyard gate with North Barrule in the background.

There was a cool breeze but it was reasonably warm in the sunshine and we walked down the farm track which leads to Drynane, a little cove where there is an obsolete iron mine, not far from the lighthouse . . .

We arrived at the cove after waiting briefly en route  for the visiting photographers who were delayed - first by a field of sheep, and then by an over-active ladybird which refused to pose for a photo, and finally by a clump of harebells near the gate into the field.

The girls climbed over the rocks and posed for photos.

As we were leaving the cove I caught a glimpse of a little bird in the distance above the entrance to the mine.  I wasn’t sure whether it had settled on a bramble or whether I was just looking at a leaf.  It was too far away to be sure - so I took a photo.  It turned out to be a wren - with a beakful of bugs for its babies!

We headed along the narrow path that curves around the steep banks above the rocks.  This bridge was built some years ago after there was a landslip caused by torrential rain.  

The other end of the path near Port Mooar is also prone to weather damage.  There the path is occasionally undermined by high tides combined with onshore gales.  But today the path was in good condition.  The vegetation had been strimmed recently and there was almost no mud.  This was lucky because I had forgotten to take my hiking boots and was walking in light shoes.

The coast was looking good with blue skies and deep blue sea.

There were plenty of flowers to photograph too. Our daughter even found a late wild orchid.  There were numerous patches of mayweed - possibly sea mayweed but it is hard to distinguish from the scented and scentless varieties and they even hybridise sometimes.

The heather is starting to flower in warm coastal areas.

We approached Port Mooar . . .

. . .  but that wasn’t the end of the wild flower photography.  There were even a few flowers among the shingle on the beach.

. . . and the warm, sheltered lane from the shore was lined with meadowsweet, white bindweed, tufted vetch, horsetails, great willowherb, brambles, honeysuckle, bird’s foot trefoil and other delights.

Yesterday the Island weather exhibited its Jekyll and Hyde character and the whole day was overcast, rainy and windy.  There was supposed to be a lull in the rain in the early afternoon so we drove out to the Point of Ayre to photograph another of the lighthouses in the north of the Island.

At this time of year part of the shingle beach is fenced off to protect the nesting terns - and the visitors.  Terns are feisty little birds and do their best to chase away visitors who venture too close to their nests.  We saw gannets and cormorants flying past as well as the terns who used the posts on their boundary fence as look-out perches, and we were watched by an inquisitive seal.

There was also a group of ducks close to the shore.  I couldn’t get a close-up photo without annoying the terns but I think they were probably eider ducks - possibly a group of females and juveniles.  There were no males in breeding plumage but after their moult the males have dark “eclipse plumage” and look similar to the females so there may have been some in the group.

It is sunny again today after a wet start - but windy.  The girls are shopping in Douglas and Tim and I have been watching a couple of little blackcaps enjoying the blackcurrants.  This is a female - only the males have a black head.

Summer 6

Move on - nothing to see.

Sunday 26th July 2015

I was tempted to suspend my weekly waffle for for a while because almost nothing of interest has happened during the past week.  In fact it was more memorable for what didn’t happen.

I think the woodpecker has moved on to pastures greener - or has gone in search of a friend.  We haven’t seen it since last Saturday morning when I wrote the last post.

I am also sad to say that the little wood mice have not been seen for a couple of weeks.  The only rodent to visit recently was a longtail which was spotted taking food or bedding under the galvanised metal coal bunker near the kitchen door. My policy of “live and let live” doesn’t extend to longtails setting up home so close to the house although I don’t mind them picking up scraps under the bird feeder.  We manoeuvered the bunker off the concrete strips which support it above ground and I fitted some bricks in the gaps in an attempt to make the base ratty proof.  I haven’t seen any unwanted lodgers since but I may move the bunker again just to check.

On a more positive note, I was delighted to spot a dunnock twice on Friday.  They used to be daily visitors to the garden but hadn’t been seen for months and we wondered if they had moved away after the influx of cats to the neighbourhood.   And I saw a little female (or juvenile) blackcap on the raspberries too.  I rushed to get my camera and when I returned it seemed to sense movement in the study and departed quickly.  I haven’t seen it since.  

There was a second missed photo op on Monday when we had a brief visit from a pigmy shrew.  I got my camera in time but the kitchen light was on and I couldn’t turn it off without alerting the shrew to my presence.   The “best” photo that I got was an out of focus shot through light reflecting off the glass - but you can more or less make out the shape of the shrew.  The other shot only featured its tail - as it disappeared under the plants.

The garden is looking very tired.  It is definitely past its best and I haven’t helped by attacking the leylandii hedge.  The leylandii isn’t a boundary hedge.  It was planted about ten feet inside the “road hedge” by the original owner of the house who was paranoid about privacy according to an ex-neighbour.  When we moved in the row of conifers were reaching for the sky and over the years we gradually reduced the height to a more manageable level.  We could ask permission to remove the trees but they provide a screen which hides the large leaf mould bin that Tim built down at the bottom of the garden.

The leylandii had been neglected for over a year since Tim last gave them a short back and sides with the electric hedge trimmer.  The top hadn’t been trimmed for a couple of years and needed more radical pruning.  I don’t know what possessed me to to tackle the task a couple of weeks before a family visit when I was in the midst of some very late and much needed spring cleaning in the house.  I think it was the prospect of the huge autumn clear-up starting in the middle of August.  It is the busiest time of the year in the garden.  As well as the traditional post-harvest activities of hedging and ditching, there are all the perennials and the wild flower bank to cut back and the autumn leaves to deal with.

So I have spent most of the last week up a ladder hacking away at the hedge until I was on the verge of getting blisters.  I was using conventional secateurs and an old rachet lopper.  On Friday I bought some small rachet pruners which made the job much easier.  They could cut through all but the thickest of the stems.  I am still busy sorting and cutting up the bits.  The woody bits are going to the tip to be recycled into compost and I am keeping the leafy bits to use as mulch under some of the shrubs.

This is what the hedge looked like two weeks ago . . .

. . . and this is the poor thing now.  I hope it recovers.

There is still very little butterfly activity in the garden.  I looked back to see what was happening last year and was amazed to see photos of masses of peacock and small tortoiseshell butterflies feasting on buddleia.  This year the first flowers on the buddleia are just starting to open and there is not a butterfly in sight.

17 July 2014

25 July 2015

The only butterflies I have seen recently have been meadow browns which like the oregano in the back garden.  The oregano is one of the few flowering plants which is putting on a good display.  This patch is in the front garden but the butterflies prefer the flowers behind the house because they get more sun.

The hydrangeas are starting to look good too.  This one seems rather confused.  It always had blue flowers in the past but recently some of the flowers have had a mauve tint and this year there are some pink and some blue flowers on the same plant.

Outside the garden gate there is a self-seeded berberis darwinii which I have to keep trimmed because it tries to obscure the name plate on the gate post.  It is covered with berries which are a great favourite of the blackbirds.  These ones have only survived because they are near the road but a brave bird will probably discover them soon.

This is the view over our garden gate.  The white flowers on the left are feverfew and on the right there is a mixture of spiraea, hydrangeas, centranthus. oregano and a few perennial geraniums

The feverfew is pretty but is rather invasive so I try to cut it back before it spreads too many seeds

There are still a few roses.  This one is an unidentified original inhabitant of the garden.

And this is Rushing Stream which is supposed to be a ground cover rose.

But there isn’t much colour apart from the patch of crocosmia which is doing its best to brighten the garden.

The bird’s foot trefoil helps too.  It is really a weed but is very popular with the bees and provides a bit of colour under the ash tree after the primroses and bluebells are over and while we are waiting for the knapweed to flower.

.

Summer 5

And now for something completely different . . .

Saturday 18th July, 2015.

Sunday was one of those “I can’t believe it” days.  After waiting for weeks hoping to see a juvenile goldfinch, not one but two visited the feeder today.  And it definitely wasn’t the same one twice.  The first one arrived in the morning before we left for the tip with the recycling stuff.  It had recently fledged and was still begging for food from an adult when I first saw it in the tree by the feeder.  It kept moving and I only got one slightly blurred photo before it disappeared.  A few minutes later I saw it again, foraging for food on the ground under the sunflower seed feeder.

After lunch I noticed another juvenile goldfinch perched on top of the feeding station.  It seemed confused by the weird contraption and all the other birds, and fluttered around for a while before finally managing to land on one of the peanut feeders.  I got a clear view through the dining room window and could see that it was older than our visitor in the morning.

We had another wet Monday and I spent some time watching birds outside the kitchen window.  The lawn is a bit patchy after the warm spell at the end of June but the July rain has stopped the brown patches from getting too large and unsightly.  A yellow hypericum is providing a splash of colour, along with the ubiquitous centranthus, foxgloves and purple toadflax. There is a hypericum hidcote in the “shrubbery” on the bottom terrace of the garden  which doesn’t get enough sun to flower well - but the  layered cutting which I moved to the back garden years ago is doing well.

I rather like the crumpled edges to the petals.

This purple toadflax self seeds and comes up in all sorts of inappropriate places.  It would be a problem in a tidy garden but I encourage it because it is a favourite of the small worker bumblebees.

I didn’t think it would be possible for another bird to upstage the juvenile goldfinch sightings - but I was wrong, as usual.  Just after lunch, Tim called me to the kitchen saying “Come and look at this - there is something big on the feeder.  Be careful not to frighten it.”  I crept to the door into the kitchen with my camera and was flabbergasted - it was a woodpecker!  I had never seen one before.  I took some photos - checked on the internet - and then emailed a photo to Manx BirdLife to ask for confirmation of my suspicions.  I was right,  It was a great spotted woodpecker and apparently they are not very common on the Island.

The great spotted was smaller than I expected.  One website described it as being about the same size as a blackbird another compared it with a starling.  The nice Irish lady at the pet shop had told me that she had friends in Andreas who had woodpeckers visiting their feeders - but I never expected to see one in our garden.  It returned twice on Tuesday.  The first visit was just before midday and then I saw it again at about eight o’clock in the evening.  It was in a better position to photograph but the light was so bad that the camera could only manage a very slow speed using the zoom, and woodpeckers move their heads all the time.  All the shots were blurred.   I was tempted to include one because it was the only one which showed the bird from the side so that you could see the the black and white spotted wing but I got some better shots later in the week.

No woodpecker sighting on Wednesday but that may be because I mowed the grass and the noise of the mower may have frightened it.  But it could have visited the feeder while I was busy doing something else.

I did see some butterflies though.  There was a small tortoiseshell on the meadowsweet up by the summerhouse while I was mowing.  It disappeared while I was fetching my camera.  I did see some other butterflies later - at least two meadow browns, a very tatty red admiral and an unidentified white in the back garden and a speckled wood near the drive.  I got a few more hummingbird hawkmoth photos too. These weird moths seem to be almost more common than butterflies this year.  I think this is the best photo so far.

On Thursday the woodpecker was back and has been seen three or four times every day since then.  We have to creep quietly into the kitchen if we want to make tea in case he (or she) is feeding and we frighten him away.  I got some much better photos of him - showing back and side views.

Initially I thought he (?) was a male because females have black heads but, after reading a bit more about them, I realised that our woodpecker is a juvenile.  Adult males only have a red patch at the back of the head (on the nape).  The juveniles all have the red patch on the top of the head and a paler undertail than the adults.

After corresponding with Manx BirdLife about the identification of the woodpecker, I agreed to take part in their Garden Birdwatch.  I am only going to start after our Canadian family visit at the beginning of August because I won’t have as much time as usual to gaze out of the window counting birds during the next three weeks.

The garden is getting more and more overgrown.  It always does at this time of year but is even worse than usual because I have been doing more vacuuming, window cleaning and tidying and less gardening than usual.  There used to be a path along the bottom of this retaining wall but it is completely choked with a mess of penstemon, centranthus, spiraea and lady’s mantle as well as overhanging plants from the bed above.  I will let them finish flowering before cutting them back.

There is a bit of a lull in new flowers.  The main flush of roses is over and the plants that flower in late summer are just starting to open.  This is one of the pink mophead hydrangeas near the drive . . .

. . . and here is the first flower to start opening on the echinops.

There are also some flowers on the mauve erigeron.  

Thinking about the erigeron reminded me of the plants on the bank outside our kitchen window in Natal.  The bank was covered with a creeping ficus and maidenhair ferns but there were also daisy-like erigeron karvinskianus (Mexican fleabane or Santa Barbara daisy) and some pretty blue flowers which were probably a type of aristea.  I wasn’t able to identify plants so easily in those "pre-digital camera and internet" days.  Which reminds me of a bumper sticker that I saw in the Co op car park.  It read “I don’t need Google because my girlfriend knows everything”!  It crossed my mind that the reason his girlfriend knew everything was that she used Google.  

While I was in the back garden yesterday searching for non-existent butterflies, I noticed that the crocosmia flowers were opening.  No need to wait for a soft light to photograph them.  They were glowing in the strong sunlight.

After those unexpected bird sightings earlier in the week, I have been wondering . . . what next? Perhaps a sighting of fairies at the bottom of the garden! Although any fairies would probably have been blown away in the strong wind today. On second thoughts, we do have fairies . . . three rather sweet little miniature roses called The Fairy. This is a magnified photo of one of the flowers.

PS A “what next”involving a little siskin happened while I was finishing this post.  There was a loud noise which sounded suspiciously like a bird hitting a window . . . and hitting it hard.  I looked out and saw a siskin lying on the steps outside the living room window.  I thought it was dead and went out to pick it up.  By the time I got there it was moving but appeared to be concussed.  I carried it inside to keep it warm and see whether it would recover.  I ended up holding it longer than I intended because I wanted to put it up in the mesh bowl on the feeder (out of reach of neighbouring felines) but I had to wait because the woodpecker was busy eating peanuts.  

The little bird just sat in the bowl for ages and I wasn’t very optimistic about its chances of recovery.  I thought it might be stimulated if other siskins were around so I put a few sunflower seeds in the bowl.  Then I started preparing supper and the next time I looked out of the window the little bird had gone.  I can’t remember ever being so glad not to see a bird.

Summer 4

More of the usual . . . rain, wind, birds, butterflies and flowers

Saturday 11th July, 2015

On Sunday we did some shower dodging in the morning and took the accumulated garden refuse out to the amenity centre at Balladoole.  There was a full load because I have made a start on the weeding, dead-heading, edge of lawn trimming, hedge cutting, etc.   There is still a long way to go and much to be done  before the annual fern cutting starts in August. Yesterday afternoon I also cut back the hydrangeas that were overhanging the path past the crab apple tree.  It seemed a shame to remove branches with buds but they were blocking the path and we seldom see the flowers on that side of the row of lace caps.

I sent off a message to a local nursery garden asking whether they have blue flag irises and hardy white arum lilies in stock.  I must be mad - I don’t know how I will fit them into this crowded garden but I have admired some which are flowering in nearby gardens and I would love to have them in our garden.  I took a photo of the irises in a cottage garden that we passed on our way home from Brookdale  late in June.  I wanted to identify them them when I got home and a photo is more accurate than my memory.  

It's Monday and we had an early walk in our plantation which was just as well because we arrived home just as the drizzle started.  I wonder whether anyone has done any research on the topic of whether more than average rainfall falls on weekends and bank holidays.  I expect people who work indoors just complain more because they are more aware of rain when they are not working.  Anyway, it is raining and today is a bank holiday on the Island, Tynwald Day.  The Manx national day is on the 5th of July but the annual ceremony at Tynwald in St John’s is held on the Monday if the 5th falls on a Sunday.  I don’t like crowds of people and ceremonial events don’t interest me and Tim is watching the tennis on TV so we are having a quiet day at home.

Later: It turned out to be a good soaking rain and plenty of it - approximately one and three quarters of an inch.  We have had more rain during the first week of July than fell during the whole of June.  The bracken up on Skyhill is really enjoying the rain.  One of the things that I love about the Island is that the views change so much with the seasons.  I took this photo from our view site at the top of the plantation to compare with a similar one that I took late in May when the bluebells were flowering.  It is taken from a similar angle - just slightly further down the slope because I was trying to get the Scots pine on the horizon into the picture but couldn't because the bracken was too high.

6 July

29 May

Birds

As well as all the usual suspects, the lesser redpoll is still visiting the feeder every day.  It is the only bird which visits our garden that is on the “red list”.  (Red is the highest conservation priority, with species needing urgent action.)  

There is no shortage of blue tits.  Tim saw five juvenile blue tits sharing the peanut feeders one afternoon.  The tits are less aggressive than the finches which are all prepared to fight their corner when the feeders are crowded.

Butterflies

There wasn’t much to report for the first few days of the week, just meadow browns and unidentified whites.  I chased the whites round the garden for a while trying to identify them but eventually got bored because they nearly always turned out to be green veined whites.  On  Friday I rushed out with my camera when a small tortoiseshell landed on the centranthus outside the kitchen window.  It was very bright and must have emerged from its chrysalis very recently.  It was rather high and I couldn’t get a good angle on it from the path and then I got too close and it flew up and got blown away in the wind.  I kept looking out of the window to see whether it would return but had no luck.

When we walked past the display of plants outside the supermarket on Tuesday, they had some rather good hydrangeas.  A white one caught my eye but I wasn’t tempted, partly because I have too many hydrangeas and partly because they cost £15-99. Tim said he couldn’t understand why people bought expensive hydrangeas when they grow so easily from cuttings.  They could get free plants just by asking for a few bits from friends or neighbours  who were pruning their plants.

The conversation reminded me of the cuttings that I planted at the end of August from some discarded stems that we liberated from the “green waste” bin at the tip.  Five of my cuttings have grown and a couple have small buds.  The bits we brought home had intensely blue flowers but I have a feeling that the flowers on the cuttings will be bright pink because I grew them in commercial compost which probably has a higher ph rating than our garden soil.  Judging by the colour of our hydrangeas, most of our soil is acid apart from an area where an alkali leached out into the soil after the new garage was built and and a wide strip of concrete was laid at the top of the drive.

The wildflower bank is dominated by meadowsweet at this time of year.  It has a very pretty flower.

This is the view looking down the bank from the top step outside the summerhouse.  The larger flower in the lower left foreground is hogweed.  It isn’t one of my favourites so I cut it down to ground level after taking the photo.  Hogweed has a thick root and is difficult to dig out.  I try to dig out the smaller plants and cut back the others before they set seed hoping to discourage them.

I usually buy a miniature rose plant in a pot to put in the spare room when we have one of our  sisters or a daughter visiting.  I am not fond of cut flowers because I find the decision about when to throw them out difficult and end up with depressing wilting flowers in a vase.  I used to plant the little roses in the garden after they finished flowering but they never did well.  So last year I planted some in a big pot and this is the result.  It is larger than the original flowers and is magnified even more in the photo.

The pink spiraea are flowering now.  I have three varieties.  I think one is Little Princess (left) and I am not sure about the one on the right.  It is one of the varieties that has pretty golden new foliage which turns a yellowy green as the leaves age.  The flowers are similar to Little Princess, which I prefer because I like the darker green leaves which look better and seem less prone to mildew.

The third variety is probably spiraea x billardii.  It is pretty but is rather vigorous, sends up suckers, and needs to be controlled more severely to stop it invading the rest of the garden.

A better behaved shrub is the Deutzia.  I love the delicate flowers, almost white but with a sprinkling of pink on the outer petals.

While I was wading through ragged robin and various other plants down on the bottom level of the garden trying to get to the Deutzia, I stopped to photo this penstemon, sheltered below the wall but still a bit battered by the wind  . . .  

. . . and some lady’s mantle, growing under overhanging shrubs,  with a sparkle of overnight raindrops still on the leaves.

And when I was returning to the house, I noticed these oxeye daisies at the corner of the garage, back-lit by the afternoon sun.