October roundup and who's been wallowing in my pond mud?

I am back from a week spent with my Mum in not so sunny Somerset, one of the reasons I've been quiet since my last post. More about that further on because I want to show pics I've taken throughout the month in some vague order. I have only taken photos on my phone as I wasn't really in the mood for shooting anything much in my garden for the gazillionth time, so these are just a few things that I found or that happened along the way. 

Andrea the hen 'helping' after I'd just weeded the tubs. I am down to only two hens now as the one who had scaly leg mite died, poor thing. I'm not replacing them and guess what, we just had to BUY some eggs!!! Both hens are now in full moult so have stopped laying.

And here she is pecking at maggots from the bag of bird peanuts that we found wriggling. It really annoys me when that happens as they are really expensive to buy and aren't always available, hence us usually buying several bags at a time. The hens weren't interested in eating the peanuts though, but luckily (or not) we had a nighttime visitor a few nights ago who came and scoffed them up. K spotted a fox one night just after he'd put the outside light on looking for Harry who hadn't come in. He thought it was Harry for a moment until he realised Harry didn't have such big ears and a pointy face. I'm wary about a fox getting into the garden and fear for the cats as well as the ducks, but as it happened dear Harry was safe as he'd got himself locked in the barn for the night! It was pretty cool seeing the fox though.

I spotted this Small Heath butterfly roosting on the Golden Rod at about 5pm one evening, long before we changed the clocks.

I also found this huge Fox Moth caterpillar. You can see from the photo with my hand just how big it is.

And now, something very interesting - another thing that's both exciting to see but also makes me wary about such a thing getting into the garden. This is up the far end of the pond where the stream comes in and the shallowest area of lake, so it dries up when the pond level is very low (it's down about 4 foot or more right now). Well now, what might have caused this? There was a trail of deep footprints and a big area that had been wallowed in. We conclude it must have been a wild boar, because the footprints are cloven and have sunk in very deeply compared to the other pawprints around it.

It might be best if you click on this photo to view it larger, as you can see coarse hair marks in the mud, just like a wild boar had been lying against it.

Again, if you look closer at the next photo you can see pawprints which at the time I thought either dog or fox, and now that we know that a fox got in, I'm guessing they must be fox tracks. The wild boar's tracks are much deeper. 

We realised that we never repaired a hole in the fence where the fence crosses the stream, so that has now been rectified (although the fox was spotted after that was done, so must be getting in through one of the holes where the cats get out. We can't repair every bit of damaged fence wire under the hedge.)

Our 'tree man' has just been to give a quote for felling more overcrowded trees and thinks he may be able to remove the stand of alders that fell over into the pond earlier in the year. Part of it is still in water, the rest in mud too squidgy to walk on and I have no idea how deep that mud is as I don't want to lose my wellies! I guess planks to stand on is the way to go. 

Piccy of the cats, though no Hallie. The lawn is how we found it when we came back from hols after it had finally rained - very blotchy. We're still awaiting the autumn rains.

Back to England, I had a lovely time, a lot of it spent eating all my favourite things! I love clotted cream and having a cream tea was so good I had to take a photo of it. K stayed at home looking after the menagerie and I flew over and my brother picked me up from Southampton airport. Sadly Flybe only use the Exeter route for a few months in the summer now and in fact there are no flights to Southampton during winter anymore. I came home on the last flight of the year. Both flights were full by the way. Conclude from that what you will.

It was gloomy most days but I did a bit of gardening for Mum and got out for a nice long walk with the husband of a friend of my Mum with his dog, which was great as it was a round trip walk that otherwise I would never have known existed. We saw dozens of pheasants. Here is a pic from the top of Mum's garden with the neighbour's Sumac tree looking really colourful.

On the way home I had a good view and the sun came out as soon as we hit France (of course!) so I took a load of photos as we were coming in to land. Love these old prop planes!

And then it was back to collecting yet more walnuts to add to the pile, and yet more huge windfall apples. I intend to stew up a load of apples and freeze them as apple sauce.

I did take a few photos of the garden with my phone. My Forest Pansy has been looking great all October, but we just had a proper white frost the other day so tons of leaves have dropped off the trees now.

And here's the pond showing how low it is, with the fallen tree just visible at the far end.

I've not been terribly in the mood for blogging - think I'm suffering from blog writer's block. It doesn't help that the depression is lurking now the gloomy weather is back, although it's mostly kept at bay by my medication. So if my posts are sporadic then that will be why. I have recently had a CT scan for my twice annual check up and everything was fine, so that's one year clear of cancer now! And I don't have a hernia which I thought I had. I do have a bulge which is why I thought I had one, but the scan just shows fat..... :-)

Wordless-ish Wednesday

As I wrote lots in the last post, I'll just finish off the month with a number of photos taken over the last few weeks with just captions and no more blurb!

It's harvest time! Walnuts are dropping and we have quite a few
apples this year, so we've already picked a load of them and they
are a million times better than the rubbish apples sold in the shops!

Thanks to the rain we had some peaches this year -
they are wild and only small with quite tough skin,
but I like these tart white fleshed ones.
Yet they only stay good for about a week, even in the fridge.

The bare earth is where the potatoes were growing but even that is being
rapidly colonised by self seeding flowers - and since I took this photo
a few weeks back it is even more colourful.

Coriander lawn emerging, with a Phacelia lawn by the fence!
I have weeded out dozens of self seeded Borage.

Again the weather has been kind to my spinach which was
about to bolt but cooler damp weather has meant
there is absolutely tons of it to harvest.

A Small Heath butterfly on my Sedum - it's rare that I see these butterflies nectaring.

Plenty of butterflies this month with a Brimstone at the top,
Red Admiral left and Comma right.

I love the wings on these huge Violet Carpenter Bees (Xylocopa violacea).

I'm being kind again - here's another Cross Orb Weaver, this time with some dinner. Just click on the link here.

Smokebush 'Grace' is flowering again
thanks to the rain in August and Sept!

I want to get more Sedums like this 'Autumn Joy' in my
thyme bank next year, along with some more Stipa grasses
as they are all drought proof.

Out of focus, but does anyone know what this is?
It was in a packet of mixed seeds for pollinators, and keeps self seeding.

Greenfinch enjoying the sunflower seeds.

A load of huge fungi seen in a nearby orchard - one was as big as a dinner plate!

A walk we did a while back up high looking down over
the Couesnon valley - not sure what is what down there as
there's a river, a mill race and a trout pond.

The viewpoint was the shrine at the top and
I'm amazed I managed to get up there at all! :-)

To finish, Bertie in some silly and cute poses.

A tummy tickle would be nice.....

.....or maybe I'll just smell the roses Erigeron!

Hope everyone in Europe is enjoying the sun!

I'm back!

Just a quick post to say I'm back. I do have plenty of photos to sort through for some future posts but in the meantime here's a photo from our ferry journey over to England with the Isle of Wight in the distance. It's a long crossing during the day from St Malo to Portsmouth but we get a cabin so we can put our feet up and chill, and have a nap if we want. However there was a coach load of French school kids on the boat and despite repeated announcements on the tannoy that they should not run on deck, it seemed that when the sun came out they appeared to be running, jumping and leaping off the staircase from the top deck to the one below. Which just happened to be right above our cabin. So we were not pleased about that!!

Coming back was the first time I've ever felt one of these large ferries actually move with the waves. I woke during the night and couldn't believe the way the boat was moving about! I managed to stagger to the loo then lay down again hoping I would not get seasick (I do sometimes, but it seems quite random as to whether I get sick or not). Thankfully lying down it seemed more like swinging on a hammock in the breeze and when I finally woke again nearer St Malo the waters had calmed down. I did feel a bit zombie like the rest of the day (perhaps fitting as it was Halloween) because every time I sat down I felt I was still moving. I have no sea legs!

During our time away there was a storm which hit southern England and Brittany (don't know about other parts of France). Where we were staying at that point (Berkshire) there was little damage, though I heard that plenty of trees had come down in Somerset, which was where we were before, staying with my Mum. 

However it seems like it hit home harder as my beautiful weeping willow has lost a huge branch from high up in the tree and now it's looking a bit of an odd shape. Unfortunately one half of the branch is now half in, half out of the pond and when you see the next photo you'll realise it's not something we can exactly just pull out. The second photo (taken in pouring rain, yes I know I wanted rain but I haven't seen a butterfly for ages and I need my bug and butterfly fill before winter hits us properly!) shows the rest of the branch, unfortunately it was a forked one and is balanced on another branch about 20/30 feet up in the tree, over the water!

Also a neighbour's old apple tree has uprooted and landed half in the stream which bounds our two properties. But that's their problem to deal with!

Of course I got my priorities right as soon as I got home. Before unpacking I went to check out the orchard and spent about 2 hours collecting walnuts. The nice housesitters had picked up a whole big plastic bowlful for us which was kind, but I found tons more and still there are nuts on the trees. It's really important to me to get as many as possible this year as last year was a dreadful year and between the red squirrels and the bad harvest I managed to collect only about 50 total, instead of thousands.  So I'm pretty happy with this little lot, which are now spread out on newspaper all over my living room floor to dry! Next job, windfall apples, and I'm glad to say there are still tons of good eating apples on the trees too.

We did have a good time whilst away but I'll fill in more with the next posts.

Walnuts

Last night on River Cottage Hugh F-W made an amazing looking sweet pastry walnut caramel pie - I've never wanted to make something so bad! We have gazillions of walnuts here from our 3 walnut trees so I am always trying to use them up - I make walnut bread often, always put chopped walnuts in crumble toppings and put them in a lot of cakes too. 

They say a walnut tree takes 10 years to start to produce. I didn't plant mine, they were already there and the year we bought this house was the first year the biggest tree had produced - a couple of nuts. Over the next few years it went from about 2 nuts to 15, then 50 to..... about 1,000 - yes, really, that big a jump! By this time the smaller trees were starting to produce too. 

I can't believe I actually advertised these two smaller trees on Anglo Info 6 years ago to anyone with a trailer or transit van who would like to come and dig them up! You'd need a digger and a huge truck now! It's just amazing how quickly they grow and the diameter of the trunk grows as rapidly as the height of the tree. The reason for wanting to get rid of the smaller trees was (sigh) because they had been planted too close to the bigger tree in the middle. Thankfully it's turned out fine with a bit of pruning although they do rather grow into each other a bit, and one isn't the prettiest of shapes.



 I'm so glad I kept the two smaller trees as they produce a larger nut - can't taste any difference but they are easier to find and pick up, and look, well, prettier!


Here's how they look now, nearly 6 years later - the two smaller trees on either side of the big one.

This is just a very small amount of the nuts I have collected this year - and yes I really, really had to stop myself from counting every single nut collected, which I have been doing until last year (1,859). Yes I'm a saddo!

And this little chap/chappess (in fact there may be two of them) who live in my garden help to 'propagate' by burying their nuts EVERYWHERE in my flower beds and veg patch and lawn - come spring I am weeding out walnut trees galore as he/she never seems to be able to find their buried nuts - but I can't be cross - how can anyone not love red squirrels!