Category Archives: wildlife

It’s raining again…

05/11/2019slugs, wildlifeJackie Elwin

so I have been indoors pottering about in the conservatory and tending to my house plants rather than braving the cold and very soggy garden. I managed to over-water one of my peace lilies so I separated the plants, dried them off, and have replanted so hopefully I have saved at least one of them. I have cut back the straggly looking mint, and have taken the yellowing leaves from the parsley plants. The greenfly are still around so I check my plants almost daily to make sure I keep on top of any potential infestation. Now I don’t normally move my cactus plants (for fear of dropping them on my lap!) but I wanted to make sure I hadn’t over-watered them too. I am glad I did as nestled at the base of one, was a clump of slug eggs. I have been trying to take better, or at least more interesting photographs lately, and am using an app (AYWMC) to help me with this. The exercise this week is to use an editing program and play about with the different editing tools so I used the slug eggs for my exercise. It was fun but I may have overdone the editing. They were in a string but by the time I had faffed around with placing them at different angles and with different lighting and backing, some of the strings broke. I found a separate egg that had an embryo showing through the transparent casing.

a string of slug eggs

slug egg with embryo

A few days without rain… yeah!

20/09/2019butterfly, wildlifeJackie Elwin

We had a lovely day day of sunshine yesterday and today is warm and sunny too. Sadly that won’t last but at least it has been nice weather to do some gardening in. I have been ripping out a few old rather scraggy looking ferns that were just filling some space until I got some new plants. So some lovely new ferns have now been planted out, some of them have coppery tones, some are small spreading ones, one is silvery coloured and one is for a hole in the wall. Can’t wait to see how they come on next year. I really wanted to tackle the viburnum bodnantense dawn as some of the older stem/trunks are very gnarled and really aught to come out but I will have to be patient and do that late winter/early summer after it has had it’s main flowering season.
I finally managed to get a quick snap on my phone camera of the Speckled wood butterfly. Wow are they flighty! I have spotted quite a few speckled woods this year and as far as I know they have green caterpillars. I also spotted a Grey dagger moth caterpillar (just molting it’s skin I think). It brings back childhood memories of when I used to sit beneath our very small tree in our back garden, with my collection of these these bright caterpillar on my face! I know it was a strange thing to do, but at least I put them all back where I found them.

Pararge aegeria (speckled wood butterfly)

Acronicta psi (Grey dagger moth) caterpillar

July, in between ninja showers…

23/07/2019flowers, plants, wildlifeJackie Elwin

it is muggy, sunny, and hot. Lots of my plants have some kind of rust or mould on them.. The meadow sweet, verbena bonariensis and a few others have powdery mildew. Some of the roses have rust and black-spot. Some huecheras have rust. I have sprayed the roses again, and have just given them their final feed so I hope they will pick up a bit. I have taken off most of the rusty leaves form plants, but the powdery mildew can be quite stubborn I am having the constant battle with the humongous slugs and have resorted to using some ‘Sluggo’ near my new delphiniums as I am sick of my new plants disappearing overnight.
Normally at this time of year I see loads of bees covering the purple lavender, veronica and agastache out in the front garden but this year there are only a few about. The agastache to the left of the mahonia is devoid of all leaves courtesy of slugs and snails, while the ones at the right side are fine. The purple loose-strife, persicaria, hedge woundwort, verbascums, geraniums, delphiniums, cat-mint and a foxgloves are still attracting bees and other pollinators.
I finally moved the old bird-bath plinth from the patio as it was falling apart and found it had been a good home for the green cellar slugs (which are good guys) so I let them find a new home behind the patio plant pots. I found a cricket on the garage wall (horrid photo taken with my phone) which was nice. We used to hear crickets when we first moved here, but haven’t seen or heard any for years now so maybe they have come back this year? All over the garden are lots of tree seeds: mainly sycamore keys and tiny silver birch seeds. They really make the place look untidy but I have finished dead-heading and weeding for today and I am off out to enjoy the sunshine before the next lot of torrential rain due tonight (along with thunder and hail so they say).

Lavender

Veronica spicata ‘Royal candles’

Persicaria affinis superbum

Sorbus hupehensis Pink pagoda berries

Delphinium cameliard

Verbascum chaxii album

Old bird-bath plinth

Green cellar slugs (Limacus maulatus)

Grove snail or brown lipped snail (Cepaea nemoralis)

Cricket?

Sycamore keys (samara)

New plants…

14/07/2019flowers, plants, stumpery, wildlifeJackie Elwin

for the widened border. I have been shopping at MacPlants again to fill in some gaps in the border. For a nice soft purple and yellow combination there is Nepets junior Walker and Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’. Along side some Cosmos Xanthos (which I had in pots on the patio). A couple of Leptinella squalida ‘Platt’s Black’ for a couple of corner areas. I had planted some Ammi visnagi but the massive slugs got them (one seedling survives). These massive slugs are such a pain and even all the wool pellets I put down are no deterrent what so ever. These slugs have destroyed half a dozen honesty, all my blue poppies, primula vialii, the ammi, knapweed and loads more besides. I do a slug patrol every morning and pick loads. They curl up into a ball to prevent being eaten, and I have found some almost the same size as a golf ball!
The milk churn was moved to a corner in the bed to make a focal point and I didn’t have a pot the correct size but ended up putting a bronze grass on a plastic saucer inside the churn, which is held up by a wooded support underneath. It looks great just now.
We moved the bench that was sitting under the tree canopy (overhanging from the golf course), which was collecting loads of bird droppings so was rather dangerous for anyone sitting there. It is still in the stumpery area but under clear skies so much nicer for resting on.
There is still more planting to be done, and moving plants about – which probably shouldn’t really be done just now but some are now in the wrong place. They used to edge the border but now that the borders are wider they need to be moved to the new edge.

Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’, Nepeta Junior Walker

Cosmos bipinnatus Xanthos

huge slug curled into a ball

huge slugs

slug on the wool pellets

Carex commons bronze in milk churn

Carex commons bronze (diff view)

bench in the stumpery

Sunshine and slabs… Yay!

20/06/2019butterfly, wildlifeJackie Elwin

There is a bit of warm sunshine about with a few showers. The slabbing is now under way so I cannot get access to the garden for the time being. All very frustrating as I was ill last week and had neither the time nor the energy to get on top of the weeding and dead-heading before the landscapers started. I am itching to get back out there as some of the plants in need of a bit of TLC. I haven’t been able to do my slug patrols either, but, maybe all the upheaval has meant they are less active. I can but hope. I will have to just potter about on the patio for the time being, which means a lot of scraping between the slabs to get the weeds out, and scrubbing the wall near the bird feeder (mostly pigeon poo). There are plenty of butterflies about now and I did get a nice photo of a Red admiral but just missed my chance to get a snap of a Speckled wood. Too slow getting my camera out.

Vanessa atalanta (Red admiral)

Finally a little bit of sunshine…

11/06/2019bee, flowers, plants, wildlifeJackie Elwin

in amongst the rain showers. The lawn is like a huge sponge, full of water, and every time my wheels go over it, it gets churned up so is like a quagmire now. The sooner I get more paving the better. When the sun does come out, it brings the bees out with it. They are everywhere. Here is a list of plants in flower now that they visit: deutzia, heuchera, syringia, foxgloves, aquilegia, centaura, rhododendron, geraniums, daisies, thyme, hebe, saxifrages, cirsium, erigeron, geum, clematis and philadelphus. The garden is literally humming with them. I have been playing with my macro lens again trying to learn how to use my mirrorless camera.

Cactus buds

Aquilegia seed head

Honesty seed head

Sepervivum arachnoideum

Bee on deutzia

2 bees on Centaura

2 bees on Cirsium

And, back to being cold again…

04/05/2019birds, fungi, garden, wildlifeJackie Elwin

oh this fickle weather. You just never know when you can put the thermals away.
I spotted the common morels again this year but a metre or so over from where they last appeared. It is always lovely to see fungi in the garden. I often go around the garden looking for slugs and it is a great opportunity to find unexpected things popping up in the garden. I noticed also that the ragged robin hasn’t appeared yet so I don’t know if it has died, along with the blue poppies and the bronze fennel.
While I was on the patio I spotted a pigeon, just sitting having a wee soak in the pond, he then started splashing about having a real bath. I took a pic from upstairs of some of the back garden. I am finding it more difficult as the years go by to push over the grass, especially when it has been raining, so we will be getting more slabbing put down in June sometime. I don’t want to have a lot of slabbing but it will make gardening easier and a lot less messy. At the moment, every time I come in from the garden, I have to get a stiff scrubbing brush on my wheelchair tyres, and also an old towel, to get most of the dirt from my tyre treads before going into the house proper. The new slabs won’t prevent me getting pigeon poo in my tyre treads though, and it can be very tricky trying to dodge them. The grass is also very uneven and some of the slabs we put down years ago have actually sunk as they were only put down onto sand.

Morchella esculenta (common morel)

Pigeon in the pond

May 2019

THAT BLOODY HERON AGAIN!

04/03/2019birds, heron, wildlifeJackie Elwin

I have been guarding the pond as much as I can from that bloody heron that keeps pinching the frogs – no wonder we only have a small clump of spawn so far. I know it is a wildlife garden so I can’t be too choosy about what wildlife visits, but I would like to see more frogs and toads, and it would be great to see some newts. Harry is going to make some kind of chicken wire thingy to see if we can prevent more frogs being nicked from the pond. The heron may still be picking them out from the borders around the garden too. I am not sure if it has a sore leg. It looked a little like it was limping, and when it flew away, it only stretched it’s left leg behind it properly. Maybe it knew it was just going to land on the nearest chimney so didn’t bother stretching them both.

Heron watching me from the garage roof.

Heron taking a stroll around the borders.

Heron, crow and hen pheasant.

That sparrowhawk again…

22/02/2019birds, wildlifeJackie Elwin

so a slightly better picture of the sparrowhawk but I still haven’t got to grips with the new camera lens. I just can’t get a really clear focussed shot and through a window is never going to do it justice.
It was hiding beside a large shrub and checking out the bird feeder for little birds. It had it’s left claw tucked inside it’s feathers again.

sparrowhawk

Brrrr it’s flipping freezing today…

01/02/2019birds, pheasants, redwings, squirrels, wildlife, woodpeckerJackie Elwin

but it has brought in a few more birds to the garden. At least it is nothing like the polar vortex that is hitting the US at the moment – I really feel for them over there. I don’t know how the wild life over there will cope with that kind of extreme cold, I guess many won’t survive.
I have been camped out beside the camera in the back room taking bird pics through the window.
The bird bath and pond are totally frozen so I keep putting out fresh water for them and feeding them as it is bitterly cold. I haven’t seen the fox with the poorly leg so I don’t know if it has survived.
The redwings wanted their bath in the the pond but it is completely frozen, and they don’t want to have a go in the 1/2 melted bird bath, so they will have to wait for Harry to melt a hole in ithe ice when he gets home. The pheasants have been picking up the little bits of fat that fall down while the squirrel is feeding at the fat cake. Trouble is all the other birds want to do the same, so there can be a lot of chasing about happening under that fat cake feeder.