Dormant Last read · last published · next check
Read 2 days ago and current, but nothing has been published for 4 years.
I posted the first in this series of blog-posts exactly twelve months ago. (There are earlier posts in the blog referring to our old garden before we moved.) In that time I have put up 26 posts, many of them illustrated with not-very-good photos. I do not think they record anything spectacular. The main point was to show that gardening for "ordinary" wildlife can be most enjoyable. This series of…
Last week I went out in the morning to find a little ice on the pond for the first time this winter. The season is moving on, although we have had an unusually mild November. Because the pond is so small it is not hard to keep removing leaves as they appear. A few are all right, but too many are best avoided. I have mentioned the small log-pile before. There is no space for anything ambitious. But…
I mentioned in early spring that I did not want my pond to become a swamp. Well, despite the March clearance, the whole thing had become overgrown with Water mint and Forget-me-not. While they were flowering, and attracting pollinators, it seemed a pity to remove them. But today was the day - fortunately before the water became untouchably cold. Some were left, of course. I sluiced each extracted…
Proof that it is definitely autumn is the appearance of a delicate toadstool on the lawn. At the same time all sorts of hips and berries are turning bright red, keeping colour going even though many flowers are fading. Different birds seem to like different berries. There was a time, in a previous garden, where greenfinches used to gorge on the rose hips. The best we can do is provide food and see…
The most obvious feature of late summer is the ripening of fruits. Gardening books have advice on how to deal with pests and diseases. I have yet to read one that advises how to dissuade a fox from taking pears and plums, usually then scattering them around with one bite taken out. However, there are still plenty of pears and plums for us. In the explicitly wild bit of the garden the brambles that…
The last day of July. After some fairly strenuous gardening (not in the "wild" garden patch) I sat peacefully in what the poet calls "a bee-loud glade". There were at least three varieties of bumblebee - possibly four or five. But I do not claim skill at identification. Some were on the knapweed in the wild patch. Some were on the sunflowers. There were several popular plants. I know I've said it…
The little pond is getting seriously overgrown with forget-me-nots and with mint, even though I though I had thinned them out pretty thoroughly in March. One learns from experience. Next year.... However, I did manage to do a little pond-dipping this afternoon and photographed the results. There are lots of these snails. I imported a few to keep the algae down, and they have multiplied many-fold.…
The garden is ablaze with flowers - not all of them native. But this blog is about the native ones. The thyme in the rockery is suddenly in full flower. It is very attractive to pollinators. So is the birdsfoot trefoil. The attempt to set up a miniature meadow, 2metres by 1 metre, has this year turned into more grasses with beautiful heads than flowers. However the ox-eye daisies have spread to…
This is June, the month of 30 days Wild. What an excellent project that is. I am trying to identify a different invertebrate every day. So far I have exposed my hopeless inability to identify bumblebees - they won't stay still - and the utter impossibility of identifying the clouds of small flies passing up and down over a small stretch of the Water of Leith. I did triumphantly count two spots on…
If you are reading these posts you probably do not need me to tell you how important bees are. The main thing is not the production of honey (I like it; I've just had some for lunch) but the work of pollination. Perhaps just as important is the whole ethical objection to the extinction of species. As John Donne famously said: "Every man's death diminishes me". His wise words can readily be…
