Refugee refound

Some time ago a severely injured female blackbird arrived outside. She had lost one leg, one wing was not working and she was generally roughed up. We thought she must have been a narrow escape from a sparrow hawk.

For weeks she crouched in the woodshed, feeding from fruit and grain we put down. She made the occasional lopsided foray outside before hastily returning to base.

Then she disappeared. Life is not kind to a disabled bird, particularly in the breeding season.

And then today, six weeks later, she was spotted in the strawberry patch

Somehow – with one leg and tatty miscoloured feathers she has found a niche.

Come the evening we look out

and others look in

Butterfly count

Like the rest of the UK we are aware of the reduction in butterlies we see. Indeed all insects are in peril, butterflies tend to get noticed (or noticed for not being there)

Earlier in the year Green-veined Whites were over our meadow in some numbers and that is now the turn of Ringlets

Apart from that we have seen a solitary Meadow Brown

cne Peacock and a pair of Red Admirals.

The Heat continues and today one of the ducks took to snoozing in the bath

The Guinea Pigs have completed their transhumance

and we have decided not to consign the latest broody to a naughty box. Instead she has been moved to maternity quarters

to await some hastily ordered hatching eggs.

The only ploughing round here is for reseeding pastures

and a lot of it seems to be going on at the moment – a dubious activity.

This is a birthday present awaiting configuration

Also seen today

Time Out

Is it through having spent too much life in the world of primary education that weather extremes – snow, high winds… and heat – are a reason to abandon the normal and allow in the lord of misrule?

Doors and windows stay open all night, instead of clearing up at the end of the day things are just left outside and above all there is a sense that nothing really matters.

How we feel the weather, as with everything else, depends on the story we choose to tell ourselves. Currently stories are in conflict: we remember golden summers from the past, the like we thought we would not see again; then we wonder if long hot dry periods followed by a succession of strong storms are the emerging pattern of the future…

Meanwhile all we can do is experience each moment to its fullest – as food is created in front of our eyes…

Courgettes and squash are notoriously prolific but for some reason we decided to grow ours in the polytunnel this year and so magnified their expansion

We have to collect the strawberries each day and are forced to eat them before they over ripen

Tomatoes are coming

Peas and beans on the way

Beetroot ready

It will be a race against the Blackbirds for the soft fruit

The Kale is well locked down

As soon as crops are eaten

we quickly re-sow

We can pretend we are surrounded by tropical flowerings

and each day, as the sun finally recedes, it sends parting shafts

Here is one creature we greet each morning as it (or they) to and fro from a chosen home

Another story is that what is really happening all around is a desperate attempt to keep going. This Blackbird, presumably on its second brood, does not give way on the short cut grass as each moment is needed for pulling out worms for the waiting brood.

The fruit trees echo that story – lets get the fruiting done then we can go to sleep for the winter

The sheep just keep their heads down and hope for the best

Light and Heat

It is possible we live in a place called East Wales. We certainly live in East Mid-Wales. You can see why we might have an identity crisis.

East Wales was today declared the hottest of the hot and for here the hottest ever.

The cloud free sky gives us maximum light and tonight as the sun passes on

The full moon takes on the task of illumination

The heat and light give intensity to the senses…

smell:

contrast:

and colour:

plus…

Hot, and getting hotter

This is the pigs’ response to the weather

mind you, it is their response to most things.

But we are enjoying the bounty

Strawberries need harvesting daily

but thanks to our good friend who you can find here we know that if they are put in jelly they don’t have to be eaten immediately

Some things are sown and seemingly eaten within days

the pay-off for other activities is so long in the future that it almost gets forgotten…

Having harvested elderflower

for “champagne”

we move on to using some for wine

and then remember we have demijohns from last year awaiting bottling

We add six bottles of elderflower wine to our store – plus thirty each of blackcurrant and damson

Rabbit Proof Fence

We normally watch Gardeners World on Friday but this week we did not get round to it until this evening when we found that Monty Don had made rabbit protection just like the one we constructed today

except that ours is better – his did not have a stile.
Our is to protect herbs. Rabbit numbers seem up at the moment

This one is pretending to eat grass but as soon as we are not looking it will be sampling our vegetables.

The strange weather combinations we have had so far this year have resulted in abundant growth. The house is weighted down by wisteria, roses and honeysuckle

The swallows were late and reduced in number but we now have one brood in the shed

We have young woodpeckers around – a little bit clueless, maybe due to having lost a parent to the Sparrowhawk. This one is thinking about having a bath

Muscovy ducks are said to be good mothers in spite of having a longer than average incubation period. We have Muscovies by accident and Cagney has gone broody only getting up once a day for a wash and brush-up

The problem is, she is sitting on just two eggs

Other moments from today

and the curtain call

Life is just a bowl of cherries

and bullrushes…

and nasturtiums…

and canna…

and honeysuckle…

and strawberries…

Twittering twigs

All of a sudden the trees are filled with the sound of twittering fledglings

Although out of the nest, these Bluetits still act as dependants

A gaping beak and a wing flutter

get the desired result

Also in the branches are fledgling Great Tits

and Robins

This brood of Flycatches is still in the box

with this male and the female

working full time to bring in food

and off to find more

Tomatoes, tomatoes everywhere…

We have just looked back at our photos from a year ago and they are very similar to those we have taken this week. The thing is, a year is plenty long enough to forget so we can go round marvelling at new things.

One thing we do remember from year to year is the challenge of finding space for all the tomato plants we want to grow on. We sow loads of seeds and then find it hard not to find a home for every plant.

Today we stripped the greenhouse of its benches in order to make tomato space

Having made progress with polytunnel Zenith since last year

We have room for more tomatoes

as well as peas

and sweet peas

(Outside we now have the Welsh French Beans:)

In the other polytunnel

the hotbed earlier used for germination now hosts these plants

germinated from supermarket bought tomatoes.

Other sights that have made us exclaim at something new (at least since last year)

So as the sun goes down

We end a day which is just like before but different in every way.

Floppy doesn’t change though

Woodpecker down

It is hard not to take sides with prey and predators; we enjoy the woodpecker visits

but are less appreciative when it tries to drill into a tit nest box.

But we can’t but be sorry to find one woodpecker dead on the ground – sparrow hawk presumably but must have been disturbed.

So we offer it up on the Tower of Silence

together with a window-strike siskin. Will probably be taken by magpies – ironically our most heated predator (not counting the wild cat)

More cheerfully today…

this wisteria bestows exquisite perfume on the air outside the door

Lucky keeps an eye on things

we re-discovered the blue rose when clearing the verdant growth

Lane verge flowers:

The cordoned cherry in polytunnel Zenith seems to be producing… cherries