Gradually the snow is melting and daytime temperatures are mostly a touch above freezing point )well below at night) - even the very first snowdrop shoot has popped its head up. The early returning birds have appeared - principally huge clocks of Canada Geese and plenty of male Red-winged Blackbirds strutting their [...]
Messy Eater Blood on the Snow We’ve noted before that the berries on the native Viburnum triloba are eaten in the fall while those on the similar European species (Guelder rose) are left until well into the New Year. Obviously those of the native species are more palatable while the [...]
As faithful followers of this journal will have gathered, there are a lot of squirrels around here. Although most of our gardening is designed to provide food and shelter to birds and insects it is a given that squirrels will take advantage ... as do raccoons and skunks and mice and all sorts [...]
The 21 January each year is Squirrel Appreciation Day - as we were reminded throughoout the day by numerous emails and FB posts from the various conservation organizations that we support. A couple of days later this rather scruffy black-form gray squirrel visited the garden in order to do some appreciating of [...]
The garden bird interest continues - after yesterday's unbeatable visit of a group of Eastern Bluebirds. Dark-eyed Juncoes. hardly uncommon at this time of year, we see them daily. However small, dark birds silhouetted against bright white snow are far from the easiest things to get decent photographs of. Well, no longer. [...]
Bluebirds in Mid-Winter !!! It's the 17 January, the sun is shining from a clear blue sky, temperatures are -16C (with windchill -27C) and there we are, sitting in the warm reading the papers when a small bird lands in the viburnum bush just outside. A quick glance, not expecting anything other [...]
We no longer keep detailed birding "lists" just for the sake of keeping lists, but we do keep records to track what happens where and when through the seasons and year by year. Today is New Year's Day 2020 - and time to record how many birds were seen in our garden during the [...]
Year One of the LoMow Lawn Project Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized.(Allan M. Armitage - professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia) After five decades or more of mowing the lawns around each of the houses [...]
As luck would have it ... This Thanksgiving Monday it was cool and showery looking out of the window, as one does, I was struck by the combination of birch tree trunks and golden birch leaves forming a backdrop to a berry-rich rowan tree that has begun to lose it's leaves and thereby [...]
Thanksgiving Sunday 2019 A lot of summer is too hot while winters, delightfully cold as they are, are too long (they'd be fine if we could just skip the month of March). Meanwhile this part of the world is famed for its glorious autumn/fall colours which are just beginning to reach their peak [...]