A Windy Day and a Wet Blanket

Tags

Escallonia 'Apple Blossom', greylags, laburnum, moorhens, peas, potatoes, runner beans, tomatoes

The day began sparklingly.  Green and blue so intense and raindrops scintillating in the sun and breeze.  I went out into the garden quite early to open the greenhouse and have a wander about.  The wind was picking up and blossom was flying from the trees.  I went back indoors and collected my camera.

The greylags keep paying us flying visits.  The female goes onto the island and sorts over the old nest.  Poor thing !  I wonder what happened while we were away.  Did the eggs hatch out and then did she lose her goslings or did they not hatch at all?  Did something (an otter?) eat the eggs or were they infertile?

Amusingly, while the female was busy on the island the gander was attacked by a moorhen.  Moorhen are quite feisty birds when they want to be and despite being much smaller than the gander, this one made the gander run very fast!  I walked round to the far side of the big pond and could hear moorhen chicks calling but couldn’t see them in the thick reeds.  Moorhens feed their chicks until they are quite big and are very caring parents until they are spooked.  They then run off as fast as their silly feet allow them, leaving the chicks to fend for themselves!  Why?

I had a look at R’s vegetable patch and admired the potatoes already coming up.

We are growing two types of potato – white mid-season and red lates.  I like it when R grows potatoes as they store well and I don’t need to buy them from about August until Christmas or later.

The trees were whipping about in the wind so I thought I’d better take a picture of the laburnums before the wind and rain stripped them of all their flowers.

 

These laburnum trees were meant to look the same, as I have been hoping to make a little arch with them.  But look at them!  One is squat and spreading outwards and the other is reaching for the skies!  I will still try to make an arch but I don’t think it will end up looking like ‘Homes and Gardens’ material.  They also grew A LOT last year and I didn’t get my act together and do anything with the trees at the right time – oh dear!

Escallonia ‘Apple Blossom’.  The book I have says this is a dense evergreen shrub.  This one is not at all dense and I’m not sure why not.  Other Escallonias we’ve had in the past have been really good shrubs – good enough for hedging with, but this loses all its leaves in the middle and a number of branches die off after a year or two.  I think I will cut it hard back and see what happens.  It may also need a lot of feeding as the soil it’s in is a little stony.

I went into the greenhouse.

Some of R’s runner bean plants.

And some of his peas.

His tomato seedlings are doing well too.

The heavy showers started shortly after I returned to the house and they’ve continued on and off all day.  A couple of times I’ve ventured out only to have to dash back in again, usually from the furthest parts of the garden.

And if you are wondering where the wet blanket comes in – that’s me with my woolly head and deafness, my runny nose and tickly cough.