A pool of blood spreads across the floor. Thick red sticky. Sweet. Our ancient, second-hand freezer has finally given up and recently-stored raspberries have leaked.
This is the time of garden abundance. Soft fruit - strawberries
, and tayberries as well as bleeding raspberries have cropped generously. The asparagus season ended at the solstice but early potatoes, beetroot, lettuce, spinach, peas have contributed to the kilo-a-day of food entering the kitchen from the vegetable garden in June. Organic. No-dig. Plastic free. And only metres away. Lots of rain - the best is yet to come.
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| Strawberries |
I should add that there is only so much kale a man can eat.
Nature's tax collectors have been busy in the container garden pond. We'd introduced six goldfish for the grandchildren but the numbers of these original goldfish steadily declined. It was only when a grey heron landed that I realised where the fish had gone. The pond is now attractively netted and fortunately, the goldfish had been having fishy fun before becoming heron food and we now have a multi-coloured shoal that arise expectantly each morning when I come with a pinch of fish breakfast.
My uncle's car mat refugias distributed around the garden are not only home to red and black ants, they are frequently used by small toads and occasionally slow worms. Both have been more evident this year than previously. Slow worms are viviperous - they give birth to live young. A big momma slow worm is in the compost. I've disturbed a snoozing male too.
I won't do any compost turning till I think she's given birth safely. Recently added compost reached a near-scalding 70C yesterday. The slow worms use compost bays where the contents have cooled and where invertebrate life abounds. No young smooth newts spotted yet - I didn't record efts until September last year so perhaps too early here.
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| Male slow worm |
The stock doves in the garage gable box have a second brood ready to fledge. It is good to see juveniles of this amber-listed bird of conservation concern slaughtering the seed in the bird feeders...
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| 'No-mow' lawn in sections and cut every four weeks |
We're enjoying our no-mow lawn. I'm letting sections grow for a month or so and then mowing. This ensures there's always unmown grass for wildlife. Creeping buttercup would have been the traditional lawn fanciers nemesis. In our lawn, their pretty yellow flowers mix beautifully with the flowers of the white clover. It 's taking some getting used to for my mum. My dad was a very conventional short-grass-and-stripes man. My regime just doesn't look right to her. The grasshoppers and micro-moths like it though.
Our 'meadow' is in its' floral glory now, with little skipper, ringlet and meadow brown butterflies busy.
The floral diversity around George's Pond is increasing. A quick list during a tea break:
- Ribwort plantain
- Creeping buttercup
- Meadow buttercup
- Purple loosestrife
- Common spotted orchid
- Cowslip
- Primrose
- Snakeshead fritillary
- Native daffodil
- Bramble
- Nettle
- Yellow rattle
- Black medic
- Goat willow
- Bindweed
- Flag iris
- Broom
- Kingcup
- Ragged robin
- Salad burnet
- Hawkweed
- Fox & cubs
- Field scabious
- Red campion
- Soft rush
- Hard rush
- Hawthorn
We've had a generous donation of nest boxes to use on the neighbouring farm. I hadn't realised on accepting the gift that I'd then have nearly twenty to modify before siting.
On the farm they tip the vegetable packing plant waste on the edge of the borehole field. On hot days, the acrid, vinegar smell of rotting carrots is all-pervasive... But what a small price to pay for the swallows that have discovered the flies that are attracted. Impossible to count, but there were at least thirty swallows there this morning. Tiny treasures. Swooping and chattering. So agile in flight.
And our farmer friend has helped us considerably too in other ways....
We've finally completed the garages and I want to store the rainwater from the roof. Bill has given us tons of stone to fill some of our surplus gabion baskets and then brought three redundant IBC's to use as water storage tanks. All will be hidden by trellis which will be cloaked in evergreen climbers.
Eventually, 3000 litres of rainwater stored for use in the vegetable garden.
But before then, twenty post holes to dig in rocky ground to a depth of 750mm. This will be my final project. Jill says that there will be a time at some point in the future when I may occasionally get to read a book on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Until then, I have a post hole digger to collect...
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