A little visitor

Wandering around the garden after school this little chap was spotted.




He/she seems very little to be out on his/her own! Rosie was quite puzzled to see something so much smaller than herself but wasn't quite so pleased when the said smaller creature managed to eat half a can of her favourite meat and vegetables!

It is brilliant to see baby hedgehogs again!

I hope it puts some weight on before hibernating!

We are very lucky with all the wildlife in the garden-------a bit too lucky with rabbits though which are a real problem!

It rained.

The garden was desperate for a drink and the odd shower over the last couple of days has really greened everything up!

The fruit trees have been loaded with blossom, the grass is growing quickly and the bluebells are casting a haze of blue over the bank. There isn't any way to take a picture of the whole garden so here is a load of different views.




Hard to take in that all 95% or more of the trees and shrubs have grown from seed or cuttings in the last nineteen years.

Spring days are here.

I always find it fascinating when I see the walks that other people take, so thought I would blog another one of our walks. We live next to the park so only have to go through the kissing gate to start.

Are there kissing gates everywhere? A kissing gate is a gate that only allows only one person at a time through. The gate swings in a sort of semi-circular enclosure. Traditionally, the first person goes through and then the second has to pay a forfeit of a kiss to be allowed through. I am happy to say that the tradition still continues with many of the people using this one!

Once through the gate we pass the garden with all the bulbs in bloom. Can you see the first of this year's baby rabbits basking in the sunshine? The adults drive us demented with their burrowing and eating all the new growth but the baby ones are very appealing.

Along the lower path in the park and then over the river. This is a view from the footbridge looking downstream.

September sunshine.

It has been a lovely few days and today it got quite hot. It was lovely to be able to get out into the garden and start the autumn tidy up.




The branches trimmed from the acer were used to make a boat complete with cabin and rudder----------and a brake!

The smallest GD will remember today as the day she learned to ride her bike without stabilisers. When I told her that now she has learned to ride she will never forget and will be able to do it even when she is 96. Her jaw dropped and then came the answer!

"I'll need a bigger bike when I'm 96"

August already!

At a certain point in the year Mother Nature completely takes over the garden!

Each year I try to start as early as possible clearing. pruning,trimming, mowing etc and tell myself that this is the year that I am going to have a "tidy" garden.

For a few months I kid myself on that I am winning, but as the year warms up everything starts to grow faster and faster. All it needs is a few days of rain , or a few days when the urge to quilt/sew is strong or just life getting in the way generally and then the garden just seems to explode with growth!

That is the point at which I concede that again I have lost the race. :o)

The garden before we got some rain

We have had a decent amount of rain over the last few days so everything is beginning to look lush again. These pictures were towards the end of a long spell of dry weather. As soon as the sun returns I will take some more. The dampness has released the scent of the philadelphus Belle Etoile. It has the same heaviness as the smell of lilies . In the evening it seems even stronger.

Rosie met a hedgehog!

It was lucky that I found the Night setting on the camera and even luckier that I pointed in the right direction as it was pitchblack out there tonight!
We used to get hedgehogs in the garden every year . This is only a small one so hopefully we are getting a new family.

We had one a few years ago that used to climb the lower branches of the apple tree to steal apples and then used to roll them away to eat them in peace!

The weather has been glorious so I have spent 4 days clearing brambles in the garden and laying a bit of hedge . Muscles I had forgotten about are aching after all the sawing, lopping and raking.

The garden covers about an acre .There is an area near the house which I try to keep tidy (ish) and a much bigger area on which we have grown a lot of trees (mainly from seed)

The rest is a long bank which, if I manage to keep it clear, produces successive carpets of colour through the year. First the white wood anemones, then the yellow celandines,bluebells, forget-me-nots,red campion and fogloves. In the autumn all the coloured fungus appear too. The bank hasn't been cleared properly for a couple of years so it is hard work.

If the weather stays dry we will have a bonfire to get rid of the briars.

I am always careful clearing this area I know that sometimes the hedgehogs hibernate up there. Yesterday I came across this one. I carefully piled a mound of dry leaves over him so that I don't disturb him again.

You can just see his prickles in the picture.

Yesterday was cold!

This was the view from our bedroom window looking down the garden.
The temperature was below freezing all day.
Wonder if we will get a white Christmas?