It’s bit warm up here

Eh up, we didn’t choose to come and live at this altitude in order to have to put up with things like this:

The Small Animals have to leave The Small Animal Shed to take a fresh air breather

The Youngest Of All

get their first taste of grass and take this as an invitation to start exploring the outside world

The lane approaching The Plot is sunken between high banks.  For the last hundred metres one side is a ten foot high near vertical south facing edifice. If it was a site for solar panels I am sure it would power  a small village – as it is, an ever-changing network of flora absorbs the energy to grow, blossom and then give way to the following wave. Today the star performers include honeysuckle

Trefoil

and assembled cast

But on the other side of the bank a melodrama is being enacted.  If I say melodrama I am sure you think Blackbird. This pair, having had their previous brood taken from the nest by The Magpie, set up home Number 2 a few yards away  in thick bushes.  In spite of the young being very loud they survived the nest to fledge early today. Dispersed they might be a little safer. One sits in the bushes

while another, rather unhelpfully, disappears into a huge plant pot

from which it can’t easily get out or receive food from its parents.

Magpies cruise round, a competing male Blackbird advances threateningly, and of course the parents kick up a major fuss.

We remove fledgling from plantpot, keep watch on Magpie scaring duties, and hope for the best.

More guests

We have a new guest on the plot

a Redstart pair, not just passing through but nesting in a box!

Some of our permanent guests are taking a bit too much for granted. Hedgehog food is available, just outside, every evening.  There are two hedgehog boxes close by

and prodding them tonight elicits grunts from both.  Bed and Breakfast.

We are getting quite excited about our Meadow.  As the days go by it produces a range of desirable species

We wonder how to best develop and enrich this area.

We see signs of fruits developing

Blackcurrent

Gooseberry

Tomato

AUBERGINE!!!

Elsewhere on the plot today

A Summer Day

Things are hotting up here

We did move to live at an altitude of 900 feet to avoid temperatures above 20 degrees, which are a bit inhibiting, so today was perfection.

The guest room is filling up

as is the front of house

facilities are in use

Some guests come bringing the Favorite Flowers

Others come  bringing gifts of roadkill

Unusual to see a buzzard in this state, looked like a young one so perhaps lacking Green Cross Code training. We retain certain parts and the remainder is offered on the Tower of Silence

However the Blackbirds are so spooked by this – distracted from their non-stop feeding trips to sound alarm calls from the tops – we remove it to the compost heap.

Among the guests an ecologist enthuses and advises on the woodland and meadow – and finds Field Mushrooms

The Guests take off to the hilltop for a bit of wild swimming in The Three Lakes

as the sheep return to the field for the Last Time.

On each occasion that shearing is available down the lane, the whole population of the field – shorn, unshorn, lambs – go down  and then return with a few more ewes liberated into their summer coats. Now our field is done, we are told there are only 200 more to shear.

We have loads of lovely nettles

but a worrying absence of butterflies. Today a solitary Red Admiral reconnoiters but without a companion ovipositing is out of the question

Elsewhere on the plot today

Guests in Residence

Tonight the Guest Room is occupied

Sadly, other guests have been evicted

This Song Thrush’s nest was on the ground in the Laurel Cave – a few shell fragements all the Magpies had left.  Other parents labour on

This young Siskin lay stunned after flying into a window.  After a little nursing he was back perching, a little unsteadily, in the Lemon Tree

Permanent residents go about their normal business

On the elder, champagne in waiting

Elsewhere on the Plot today

Guest Suite (including loo-with-a-view) now available

We know that a number of our friends, who follow this blog, have expressed a wish to come and stay.  This weekend we host our first such visitation, of fourteen-and-a-half guests and our Guest Suite is ready.

You approach through your own dedicated gate from which the sitting room can be glimpsed

with an open hearth

This room features panoramic views across the valley

Across from the sitting room is the kitchenette

with a full range of cooking facilities

and off-shot scullery

The bathroom is approached down a shady corridor

Men needing a quick pee can divert to the right

where a male urinal is located, complete with a footing catering for a range of sizes

If you choose to mount the steps you can pause and admire the stained-glass window which features mirror-panes to reflect the woodland theme

At the top of the steps you can pause on the balcony to take in the view

before turning to take in the splendor of the interior

This is a Poo and Pee arrangement, so on entering you have to make your choice

Which ever you choose we hope you will sit down and enjoy the view

Reading material is available

If Poo is your choice you will need to follow it with a handful of home-made sawdust

before availing yourself of the washroom facilities

Pause to admire the antique carvings

Outside you might like to investigate the technology behind your experience

If you have contributed Poo it will be in this wheelie bin where, combined with sawdust, it will be composting down in the best possible combination.  When this bin is full it will be swapped out and left for one year – after which it will be crumbly garden-friendly enrichment.

If you chose Pee (downstairs or upstairs) your high nitrogen output will be combining with this high carbon straw-stack to again produce a perfect nutritional result.

So, pause to reflect what this little building has to offer

An aesthetic experience with natural features, panoramic views and a high standard of interior decoration.  Plus knowing that no water, purified at vast expense, has been wasted to accompany your output – which is in fact being processed to enrich the land.

Today we have new neighbours

just released from their winter Purdah.

While this Siskin, singing in the Old Ash,

might not know of the fledgling that earlier flew into a window.  Now convalescing  in our care but taking a long time to recover – it might well not make it.

52/140/0151

We have a number! We are now legally certified to be host to animals with four legs – are you reading this Bert?

When you walk through a strange land the strident features catch your eye.  When you dwell on the plot, seeing it each day as it shifts and transmutes, you eye is drawn in closer and closer.

Here are some sights from today’s level of seeing

Down along the hedgerow

The lane to our plot is sunken below the level of the surrounding fields.  Passing along it one is bounded on both sides by six foot banks.

One North facing, the other South, each has its own distinct ecosystem. As the months pass by the complexion of the banks shifts and changes as plants take their turn to come into flower. This is a glimpse of a short section of that hedgerow today:

Meanwhile, Fanny, the Young ‘Un trying hardest to turn into a cockerel is practising cockerel skills on top of the run – hoarse crowing, neck twisting, strutting and wing flapping

And we do have a new species to add to our bird list today – The House Sparrow.  After populating the lower farm yard for months while refusing to venture uphill today they couldn’t keep away – feeding fledglings, cheeping noisily.  Why come here now?

Elsewhere on the plot today

The Nights are Drawing In

Today we might have two minutes less daylight than yesterday but quality is more important than quantity

Basking in the evening sun, a family of baby rabbits

They might look sweet but we think they are after this

In the same way, we are altering our stance on foxes, which we used to feed in the city.  They have been spotted on our patch in daylight hours – we think of our youngest, today taking a communal dustbath

although May needs a bit of a shock

She is going broody, spending all day in the nestbox, collecting other hen’s eggs under her radiating breast.  When ejected she complains bitterly. Tomorrow she is going in The Box.

A visit to a neighbour’s meadows to see their variety of orchids.  We are making a start, seeing a good showing of Yellow Rattle in our little meadow

We will shortly be able to supply a full guided tour of the Composting Toilet but for now we can say that the balcony has been installed

Elsewhere on The Plot today

The Longest Day

The Solstice is rather overcast here.  Yesterday the cloud line hovered below the hilltops, later descending to mist up the field below us.  The sheep on the tops must think they are wrapped in a fleece. The ones in the field next to us are marched down the lane and later back up again, some of them having lost their fleece

The hedgehogs can’t wait for the longest day to end and have to come to feed while the day is still light

The work of a much appreciated visitor brings shape to the willow bower

and it is now possible to access the compost toilet without going up a stepladder

One of the hens is not pulling her weight today

Elsewhere around the plot

Flycatchers leave, Wagtails take over

The problem with setting up a motion activated camera is that if it is left trained on a nest of chicks for a day you end up with about two thousand pictures as the parents bring in a non-stop supply of food.  The Flycatchers have fledged and gone several days ago and now that we are missing their company we trawl through all those pictures.  The thing is, they all show the same thing.

Either the male arriving with food

or the female arriving with food

Bottoms sticking out of the box

and chicks waiting impatiently

Sometimes we see two family members together

and occasionally a passing visitor

But their box is now empty and quiet and attention shifts to the stump outside the kitchen window

Three wagtail fledglings take up residence there and wait for the next airdrop of supplies; their two stronger siblings have already gone off to explore the world.

They mob the hard-pressed parent

and watch indignantly as he leaves

How many insects are delivered each time?

There are fledglings everywhere

Meanwhile, out in the small animal house the Youngest Ones Of All don’t really like being on the floor

looking at our feet. They would much rather wait to ambush us at eye-level

Last night they ended up roosting on top of the Guinea Pig cage.

Elsewhere on the plot today