20+ years ago when we were new here, I would come home from work each day in late summer and spend an hour digging a hole for a pond in the garden and heaping up the excavated spoil into a hill for the eventual creation of a waterfall. I had not realised [...]
The first shoots of Sanguinaria (Bloodroot) have appeared in the last 24 hours. Very soon the flowers will open and after that the Cigar" will unfurl to reveal the leaves.
We were visited by a couple of raccoons in the garden, one barely being impeded by next door's fence which it scaled without effort. The other passed through to investigate what we had, digging several holes with its busy little paws as it went. The sludge on the bottom of the only partially [...]
Now we are in the middle of April the days, and most nights, are above freezing - albeit not by much today. There is up to 15cm of snow currently forecast for next Tuesday, but if it arrives it won't stick around long as the forecast is for somewhat warmer days afterwards. [...]
As we start the growing season the project is to make these posts more or less weekly in frequency but you know how reality gets in the way of good intentions. For whatever reason we know there are a gratifying number of green-thumbed people who take an interest in what happens in [...]
In the recent snows we have had a lot of "winter finches" visit the garden. There are still photos in a separate post on this journal but here is a brief video of a Common redpoll interacting with American Goldfinches at one of our feeders.
One of the must do tasks for New Year's Day around here is to total up the number of species of birds that we have heard or seen in or from our garden during the preceding year. The garden list for 2021 topped off at a gratifying 76 different species of birds. [...]
All Hallows Garden Flowers : 1 November 2021 In England we used to have fun finding how many plants we had in flower in the garden on Christmas Day. Not really an option here but J had a good idea when she noticed just how many flowers are still flowering (some only just) [...]
Some simple suggestions ... Faithful readers of our posts will have gathered some ideas about how to attract wildlife to their gardens over spring, summer and early fall but now winter approaches and what do we do with all those native plants still standing tall? The neighbours are starting to look askance. [...]
Dark-eyed Juncos As the temperatures start to fall towards zero (a few days yet) and the cold rain falls we are beginning to see the first arrivals of birds form the north that usually spend the winter with us. Today there was a flock of over a dozen Dark-eyed Juncos busily working [...]