Up at the Big House

The warm weather has brought out the Masonry Bees with mating on the mind of the Males.

I think the brown re-cycling bins have done the birds no favours. Every little twig and leaf can now be tidied up and placed out of sight and access to our feathered friends then taken far away. Thus now at nest building time I have a range of birds collecting building material in my garden at the same time.

My garden is the favourite because of my compost heap. They don't steal material off it they are meticulously tidying the surface of the ground of composted material that was applied last season.
Last year I found a Blackbirds nest in an Escallonia Hedge, it was built using many Tea Bags. I compost the bags from the numerous cuppa's consumed here daily, the bags are slow to break down, once they have been through the composting process they finally turn up on the soils surface.

I have had as many as 12 crows at one time collecting Tea Bags first thing in the morning. I watched to see where they were taking them. Not too far was the answer, some houses around 100m away have become favourite sitting places for them. From there they can watch for food placed out by a neighbour. The Crows have somehow blocked the Chimney Pots on these houses and the Tea Bags are being used to line the nests they are building in them.

The well meaning feeding of birds I consider is distorting the balance of species around the houses. The Crows and Pigeons drive out the smaller species, Magpies we have in abundance and these will steal the eggs of the smaller birds.
The food put out attracts Mice and Rats, one neighbour who has multiple feeders keeps a sack of Peanuts in his Greenhouse. When I mentioned that I was catching Mice which had tunnelled through near my house he confirmed that he thought there was a mouse taking the nuts from the sack and burying them.
Another imbalance of nature introduced, that was not a mouse I have now caught 29 of them. My Peas sown in the Greenhouse were being taken by them, little holes in the compost being evidence of attack. Later when the Peas were up the shoots were eaten off at ground level and the seed taken, this is the sort of damage often blamed on birds.

Fortunately Blue Tits have nested again in my box, I spotted no building material going in but the male is now working hard early in the morning, he collects food from the trees around and is feeding the sitting female I assume.

The Peas survived the onslaught. The bank Holiday rain will do them good.

Likewise the Broad Beans also raised under glass.

Last year I grew a number of varieties of Shallots, they will gradually lessen as the most favourable ones to our climate dominate. The Grey, Frogs Legs did not at all well and there are none in these rows. They get one more chance in another spot, it may have been a bad year last year but I think it most likely that they will not do well in these parts.

Do you remember the caterpillar savaged Purple Sprouting Broccoli from last year that looked like a skeleton. There are pictures just back a little in the blog. As promised they have been fed, tended and nursed to see if a worthwhile crop could be rescued. Yesterday we had a meal from them. The film star is a later developer and has not yet produced a head. This is a characteristic of PSB, no two plants are genetically the same from a packet of seeds. The picture is of the same plant from the previous postings, whilst only around half as tall it would be if it wasn't butchered in the summer it is not a bad plant. The ground has not been needed for anything else so I consider it well worth leaving them to produce what they will.

Finally the blossom is beautiful now this is my Conference Pear tree cordon trained against a fence

Well I have been so busy with techy stuff. Computing, radio construction and blogging, I have fitted in some work on the house and planted the seeds in the garden. This has lead to a bit of neglect of this blog.

So here we are with catch up time. First the Standard Fuchsia that I started, the cutting came from my friend's garden in France. It was triploid, ideal for a standard if the head was balanced, it wasn't, it got worse, so it was off with its head. I cut it down to a lower node, it set it back well, but it worked.

Maybe now this will turn out to be a nice plant. The set back means it has been beaten into flower by another variety of fuchsia from the same garden in France.

If you think Fuchsia cuttings are difficult at home try rooting them on tour in a Motor Home. The cuttings started in a plastic glove, the ones you get at filling stations, one cutting per finger. Some water was put in the glove then shaken out, inflated with breath then tied up at the wrist. This cows udder poly tunnel was tossed around and given a reasonable growing spot when ever possible. When it came to potting on, an empty terracotta candle holder with no drain hole was pressed into use, I didn't have compost so I stole a hand full of sharp shell laden building sand. They had sea air, temperatures of 30C, heavy rain and wind, golly I have surprised myself.