Middle Spotted Woodpecker and December's tree surgery

Brrrr! We are having a cold snap with real winter weather, something we haven't had for more than a few days here and there for quite a few years. The lake has been frozen over for about a week now and every morning I have to go out and take fresh water to the hens whose water bowls have frozen solid. I'm doing the same for the wild birds' water too as they can't drink from the lake edge. It's still not been as cold as in the early years here when we reguarly had -8C, but it was down to -5C/6C a few times. I'd also forgotten about freezing pipes so we've nearly lost our kitchen cold water feed a couple of times but I've got to the tap to run it just in time, however because it's been so long since we had such a cold period I'd forgotten about the 2nd floor shower room, so the cold feed is frozen solid there! It's the first time I've worn my thermals for quite a few years too. Aaarrgh, roll on spring, I can do without all this! (However, the sun is shining all day long..... it is so much lovelier than the milder gloom and drizzle which is due to come back soon.... you just can't win!) (That blurb was written two days ago and the end of the freeze has just started with cloud and some drizzle!)

We have a new(ish) visitor to the peanut feeder. It's a Middle Spotted Woodpecker which is a fair bit smaller and a lot prettier than the Great Spotted Woodpecker. We've seen it here before many years ago (and a Lesser Spotted too) but this time it has become a regular visitor. I haven't got any very good photos so far because the only times I've had my camera to hand have been when it's been either early in the day with low light, or just plain gloomy with low light!

Having seen the state of the peanut feeder in K's photo it was time for a new one, and thankfully he found a spare feeder in the barn, ditto a seed dispenser too which is hanging on our other feeding station. I've now found a good use for the last of the rubbery windfall apples as the blackbirds are enjoying munching on them. This is the kind of weather when it's really important to feed the wild birds and especially to provide them with fresh water to drink and bathe in. (But you knew all that, didn't you?)

This is Keith's photo.

The ducks have managed to keep a small pool of water unfrozen; unfortunately for all concerned this is not close to the bank where we can put food. At first K managed to break the ice but the next day it was already too thick! Dirk is hopeless on the ice and skids everywhere and looks like he's about to break his legs, and although Rachel is managing to get up onto the ice more easily than him, she doesn't seem to want to walk over to the bank where the food is. Luckily K had a brainwave and the pole he was using to break the ice with was put to good use again - this time with the apple picking basket holding duck food! He can just reach to put the food on the ice and the ducks are happily eating it from the water. Honestly, these creatures don't want much, do they?!!

Going back to December, our 'tree man' came and felled a load of trees again, just like he did three years ago. This time some largish trees had to go, mostly due to crowding out with other trees. I had to decide which ones were most important to keep - for example, although I hate to see a beautiful lime tree being cut down, I have five of them, yet only one cedar, as we already felled one of them which had obliterated the path down to the beach. So out of three specimen trees growing into each other, the lime had to go. In the photo below it's a sycamore which has had the chop as it was shading out my liquidambar. We have loads of sycamores so that wasn't a difficult decision. All this wood will be good firewood in two years time.

The monster shredding machine. This was parked right outside the chicken run and the poor hens cowered indoors for about three days, terrified in case the scary monster started making loud noises again. Sorry hens! We have kept a lot of the shredded wood and put it down on the veg patch paths again, and also on the path leading down to the lake.

The lime tree getting the chop but one of these three trees had to go.

Originally the tree man was going to have a bash at removing the fallen stand of alders in the lake, but as the water level had risen by a couple of feet since he first viewed it this was deemed impossible and he will return next year when the water level is at its lowest. He had a mate in to help as there was a fair bit of work involved here - anyway I had a brainwave and suggested that as they couldn't do the tree in the lake, could they prune my apple trees and reduce the height considerably. We had already asked him to clear the stream banks of brambles which were taller than my head - this is a job that's bad enough doing every year but when you haven't done it for three years it gets out of control. I can tell you we both breathed a HUGE sigh of relief at not having to prune the apples and pears this year!

Taken from my living room window - man up an apple tree.

I'm surprised they managed to climb up these relatively thin branches - and so overcrowed inside the trees too.

Afterwards, one of the trees with lopped off branches. All these fallen apples have been feeding Redwings and Fieldfares this winter.

The stream is visible! The other side has now been cleared by the owners of that land - it will grow back but K is going to try to strim it and keep the brambles and nettles down. In the past I've wanted to keep the nettles for the wildlife, but there are times when nature just has to be controlled. There are tons of nettles out in the ditches for the butterflies and moths to lay their eggs on.

At this time (December) there were still some leaves clinging to the Liquidambar tree and glowing in the sunshine.

Even on the ground they retained their colour for a long time. This way you get to enjoy the colourful leaves for much longer!

I'm jumping backwards and forwards in time but I have already uploaded the photos and can't be bothered to delete and rearrange the order here! In this cold sunny snap it seemed a good time to burn all the crap we've been piling up in the veg patch waiting for there to be enough to have a good bonfire. We are not supposed to have bonfires anymore for environmental reasons and because of the nuisance to neighbours. Well we didn't really know that but we do now, although having googled to try to find the law on this one for our department, all I can find is a lot of conflicting information on government sites. What else is new?!

You can see how much stuff there was - a mix of brambles, whippy elm growth, sycamore saplings, ivy and a fair bit of dead thuya hedge, plus a lot of veg patch weeds. The official advice is to compost or shred your garden waste (we do, but you can't do this kind of thing!) or take it to the tip. This would be quite a few trailer loads plus a lot of the twigs and stems would need to be cut to fit into our small trailer, all of which takes a lot of time. I've been cracking on with clearing the jungle much faster by not having to snip up bramble stems along the way.

It did produce a lot of smelly smoke but it's not like we're doing this every week - in fact it is only our fourth bonfire here in 12 years! We won't have one again though now we know it's not permitted. Since I wrote this one of our neighbours has had a smelly bonfire..... :-)

To finish off, whilst I was clearing up our overgrown pathways I found this twig with some interesting fungi on it. It's dead wood and the twig is thinner than my finger so the fungi is really small. I wasn't entirely sure if that is what it was but the underside of the fungi looks a bit like Turkey Tails. The small bits look like scale insect though!

Honestly, the less frequently I blog, the longer my posts get. If you made it this far, well done! It's been quite a marathon for me writing it..... :-)

Veg patch update - August

A few bugs at the end of this post but it's mainly about the veggies for a change!

Blight came about 3 weeks ago despite having sprayed with Bordeaux Mix as a preventive measure. I removed most of the leaves from the tomatoes and we sprayed again, but it was too late to stop the spread on the potatoes so the haulms had to be removed. I haven't dug up my maincrop Desirees yet so don't know what size they will be, as some were still flowering when the blight hit. However removing most of the tomato leaves has meant they started ripening much quicker (maybe I should do that more often!) so I've been having an amazing harvest from them and have only lost one plant so far, which got blight in the stem. The downside to B. Mix of course is that the fruit gets splashed whilst spraying, so we have to wash them very carefully which is time consuming. But without the Mix it wouldn't be worth my while growing tomatoes at all. Cross fingers they will last a bit longer!

After the blight but just before the rains came.

Far more welcome was rain. Real, substantial, proper, pouring rain. The garden had been so dry and I'd been watering and hosing most of the time since early June. There was so much rain over three days that the stream even started flowing again which filled up the lake by about one and half feet. Hopefully now it won't get too low before the autumn rains come and fill it up completely.

The seasonal stream which fills the lake.

Nothing is stopping the courgettes (does it ever?!) or the cucumbers which are going great guns. I'm growing a variety of cucumber called 'Burpless' which I bought in England. Unfortunately these are long cucumbers so that means each one is twice the size of the ones I usually grow..... and I've got three plants! Next year only two..... and one of the two courgette plants decided to split and grow in two directions so I'm getting the equivalent of having three plants - way too much! Both my fridges and both upright and chest freezers are now full to the brim with produce including the vats of courgette, basil and parmesan soup which I make and there's no room for more - so it's compost time for the excess courgettes from now on. The hens get half a cucumber a day but turn up their noses at courgettes!

I have my first aubergine fruit in more than 10 years - although to be fair this is only the second time I've tried growing them here. The first time I had zero fruit! However since cutting the potato haulms down I keep finding Colorado Beetles on them which have to be killed, so I keep a couple of bashing stones nearby - instant death although I don't like doing it!

I'm harvesting this much every 2-3 days, bar the aubergines.
The green toms are from a plant that had blight in the stem, so it had
to be removed. These are ripening indoors now.

Nasturtiums are taking over and these around the compost bins are the ones that were being eaten by the Ornate Shield Bugs, which seem to have disappeared now, so the plants look bigger and healthier and at last have flowers. I haven't been able to close the gate to the veg patch for ages, but as that doesn't stop the cats getting in there's little point bothering.

Nasturtiums, and on the right a Physalis which is now a bit swamped by them, as well
as Dill growing through this jungle, but Physalis is a bit of a thug itself so it's doing fine!

Can you see what's wrong with this picture? :-)
One potimarron stem had to be rescued from the field next door and
laid down on the bit of grass between my fence and the electric fencing.

I cleared the patch where the leeks were to be transplanted which had had a lot of weeds and self seeded Phacelia growing there.... then the rains came and I should have known this would happen!

Phacelia seedlings galore!

A few views of the veg patch - cucumber frame on the left.

Even my spring onions get rust, and all the lettuce bolted at once.
But it looks pretty (ish) and the hens love to eat it.

In the foreground on the left is a Thai Aubergine called 'Kermit'. :-) I have had one whole fruit
from it. On the right are.... well if you don't know you are very lucky!!!

I love having the space to have tons of annual flowers in here too.
No colour schemes - here anything goes and the brighter the better!

Left and bottom right are from my Pollinator Meadow year 3. I have Mirabilis jalapa (top left)
and a different kind of Knapweed (bottom right) which need to be saved and transplanted
elsewhere for next year. Middle and top right is Orange Cosmos (and a Jersey Tiger Moth).

Funny shaped Sunflowers which I grew from seed!

Here's another one early one morning with a
Jersey Tiger Moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria) on it.
There are loads of Jersey Tigers this summer.

A Woolly Bear on the perimeter fence! This is the caterpillar of the
Garden Tiger Moth (Arctia caja). This was back in July and I saw it the
next day in the weeds I was clearing for the leek patch. They run really fast!

Now what was I saying about not seeing any of 'my' Swallowtails coming back to visit? Obviously some have, as I suddenly noticed there were a number of caterpillars on my Dill in the veg patch, of varying instars. This one though I found on the Bronze Fennel out the front of the house, which has no foliage left and the flowers are going over, hence the reason why it was looking so yellow. As it had nothing left to eat I transferred it to some Dill in the veg patch and it ought to green up in colour due to a change in diet. I am NOT bringing any of these cats indoors though! I've done my bit, now they fend for themselves which is as it should be. But I have my caterpillars to talk to again which makes me happy. :-)

Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) caterpillar.
The top photo is its rear end with the unhappy face.

And then there's the fruit, oh boy is there fruit, but that will have to be another post!

At last some sunshine

We have been busy over the last ten days or so whenever there has been a dry spell between showers. I could make this the shortest blog post ever by saying we have cleared the stream of all the brambles and dead vegetation clogging it up, and are currently ploughing our way through the apple and pear tree pruning in the orchard. But that's no fun if I don't have new photos to share, though if you want to see pics of my OH up a ladder, or what the stream looks like choked up with brambles, you'll have to look at last year's posts!

In the garden the hellebores are all flowering now and with milder weather, even a fair bit of sun lately, we look set to have daffodils flowering before the end of the month, which is rather early. It's making me a bit worried as I feel very behind with garden jobs and want to get clearing up all the beds and borders so that I can actually see all those bulbs properly!

Mirabelle plum blossom, possibly the earliest
it has flowered

Oriental Hellebore covered in dew, and a little aphid

The same Hellebore, looking a different colour as taken with
a different camera. Much work to be done here tidying up!

Daffodils getting ready to burst open

The biggest excitement round here in this sleepy hamlet is the start of our newest neighbour's renovation job! She bought this place over a year ago. We always thought the two buildings were just a couple of barns but in fact at least one is (was!) a proper house. I can see this view from my upstairs bathroom window and that's where I took these photos from, through the glass. The first was from about 2 weeks ago and since then the spoil heaps of soil and rocks have grown enormously. The builders have dug down over 2 foot of floor, probably to give them more ceiling space. We did go round and have a nosy but there's not a lot to look at just yet.

The house on the right is already renovated and belongs to a different family.

Two weeks later and the new window opening is finished and the soil piles keep on growing!
This view is over our orchard (the greener grass), with our stream in between that
and the neighbour.

The stream. Glad to say my wellies are still waterproof
as I have spent quite a few hours standing in it!

I've noticed all sorts of vegetation coming to life, from edible leaves such as sorrel to the poisonous but attractive woodland plant, Lords and Ladies (Arum maculatum), below. According to Wikipedia the root of this plant was once used for culinary purposes but has to be prepared just so, otherwise it is highly toxic. I'll be giving this one a miss!

Arum maculatum

The Walnut trees have a yellow look about them from all the interesting lichen
covering the trunk and branches

Finished! I did wonder what the pink thing was hanging out of my pocket,
only to realise I had stuffed my mucky duck cleaning out Marigolds (rubber gloves)
in my pockets for some reason.

A Robin kept us company

There have been some lovely sunny mornings just recently. Song thrushes and dunnocks have started singing and misty views like this across the fields at the bottom of the property, and dew shining on the grass in the sunlight, just lift the spirits after all the rain that we have had.

View from the bottom end of our property - the line of dead bracken in the foreground
is beside the stream running into our lake

We had our first feast of
Purple Sprouting Broccoli and it was delicious!

Another sign of spring is the start of the egg mountain all over again. Both of my ducks are laying again after a really long break. Doris the Saxony went off lay back in June, useless bird! But dear old Freckles, the only remaining of our original four white ducks, and whose egg laying petered out last spring, somehow managed to produce these two tiny little eggs! I know they'll only have a bit of white inside and no yolk, but it was so sweet to find these tiny eggs which only weigh about 21 grams. Thankfully I am able to sell eggs to a neighbour so the birds can start to earn their keep again.

Hooray - eggs!

I have taken tons of photos the last couple of mornings as the sun was shining. I can't post them all here but if you are on Facebook then I do share extra photos there - just click on the Chateau Moorhen FB link at the top right.