Not quite self-sufficient

I'm on a low cholesterol diet so MrNifty is encouraging me by growing salad leaves. The row that is shooting up is the appropriately-named rocket, the other more relaxed row is mixed leaves. The row that is hardly growing at all is spring onions, but I don't like them anyway! I'm not mad on salad, but it's definitely nicer to eat from the garden. We're thinning them by plucking, here's part of today's lunch...

Good thing we have moved, remember all the rabbits in our old garden? Don't think we'd have harvested much!

Birdwatching from the sofa!

We often go birdwatching on our walks, but since moving we've seen so many birds in our garden.

Today there was a greenfinch picking up nesting materials from the hanging basket directly outside the kitchen door. Fortunately he wasn't after the herb seedlings!

He came back several times, we're now the greenfinch equivalent of the local DIY store I think.

A few minutes later I spotted (pun intended!) a great spotted woodpecker in the birdbath. By the time I'd grabbed the camera he'd gone down to the grass. I included the first blurred photo because it shows (to me, anyway) that he was busily drilling away in the ground.

According to my bird book they are "rarely seen on the ground"

Look at that beak!

So beautiful. His (or her) mate was around too, but hid in a tree when I tried to get nearer outside. 

These photos are all taken from indoors, through glass.

Etta relaxes in the garden before the Giveaway

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Pond life

Sitting by my pond... the first water lily is out. It looks like it's carved from wax, the insects love it. the moment the sun goes down it closes up, I hope the bugs get out in time!



A rare treat. I don't often spot the resident newt.



I'm hoping it's a female. A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to observe one laying her eggs. She gets into just this position on a leafy strand of pond weed, lays a single egg at a time and wraps it into an envelope of leaf which she makes with her two hind legs - then moves on to the next leaf.

In an English Country Garden....

The fritillaries (above) are in full bloom now.



The bleeding hearts aren't quite open, but show promise of what is to come.

And as for the taddies!

You probably think I'm being cruel, keeping the new babies in such shallow water - but they've chosen to swim to the very edge of the pond. It's shelved gently from the gravel into the water, like a beach - and the daft tadpoles like to go there because of course the shallow water is warmer.



The ones at the back are pushing and shoving - the tadpoles at the edge are virtually on dry land! I had to hose the pebbles down so they would go back in the water (I'm a nice mum really!)

My garden (an apology)

I was chatting with Karrita the other day ( Mymothersgarden.etsy.com ) and said I didn't really have a garden, it was mostly gravel.

Afterwards, I thought "Eeek, I hope the garden didn't hear me!"



Because actually, I love my garden. It is mostly gravel on purpose, because my hay fever has been a lot easier to bear without a lawn to cut!



We have quite a few pots with various plants in (no, don't ask me to name them) and I've also broadcast handfulls of seed, and allowed plants to self seed where they will. We have lots of aquilegia and foxgloves coming up.


I know these ones (above)! They're snakeshead fritillaries, and look lovely fluttering about in the breeze.


And this is a little acer, chosen to contrast with the smoky blue grey fence.



Last but not least, I love my pond, where the tadpoles are growing bigger every day.

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YAY for pondlife!

I love my pond, every morning I pop outside to see how the tadpoles are getting on - quite often while still in my dressing gown, so it's a good thing we have high fences!



They've mostly hatched now, but are still in the safety of the spawn mass. There are some fallen leaves in the water, so many are clustering in the shallow warmer water on the leaf surfaces.

Last year, when they got braver and moved into the shallow water at the shelving edge of the pond, where the water is warmer, a lot of them were picked off by the blackbirds :-(




The water boatmen took a lot too -so I spent many a happy hour getting in nature's way, scooping ot water boatmen and chucking them over the fence! They soon came back though.




Big excitement this morning - saw the first newt in our pond! I love newts even more than tadpoles, so I won't mind the newt picking off a few for lunch.

In our previous garden I spent hours watching newts do their courtship dance - it's really cute. they bend their tails back parallel to their bodies and wiggle it about - very sexy, if you're a lady newt. They develop beautiful orange chests too.



And then it's egg laying time. Unlike frogs, newt eggs are laid individually. The mummy newt grasps a pond leaf in her back legs, lays an egg and carefully wraps each egg in a leaf - so sweet! I'm looking forward to newt taddies - they develop front legs first, the other way around from frog taddies.

I'll stop now - sorry, I got carried away. Every now and then I miss teaching so much I can't help myself from presenting a lesson!

eeeeeeeewwwwwww :-(

I was just looking out of the window, wondering what the large bird on the nutfeeder was....

when I realised....

not a bird at all!

YUCK