30/09/2024
Ramblings in the Garden
Welcome October, we can now take our foot off the gardening pedal but still enjoy the tangling stems and seed heads of sunflowers, alliums and verbena bampton while the cosmos, chrysanthemums, dahlias and a few sedums continue to provide wonderful colour. Though forgotten after planting, golden yellow rudbeckias are showing up so well against the sombre green backdrop of the oil tank. We are looking forward to the first apples on the stepover apple tree that bears the unusual name of Ashmead’s Kernel and which travelled with us nearly 2 years ago. With a little training it should provide a 30” high fruiting edge to a steep path. A multitude of pots which decorate the low walls surrounding the patio area will have to be emptied, cleaned, refilled and planted up with bulbs.
My green fingered partner has decided to try some hardwood cuttings this year but not her usual way of snipping bits off and placing in a glass of water until the roots show. No, this time I saw her purchase some rooting powder! So she will cut a healthy looking stem just above a bud, reduce this to 9” pieces by cutting below a bud, dip in the powder and insert into a gritty compost leaving 4-5” above the surface. Then water and either place in a sheltered position outside or in a greenhouse and wait for the action to happen. This month should see activity around horse chestnut trees as the conkers ripen and drop – do kids still ignore health and safety and try to knock hell out of their opponent’s ‘kingy’ playing Conkers?
Like many tasks in this garden, they start off relatively small but in time they become major projects and so a piece of wood with variable sized holes drilled in it designed for sheltering and hibernating bees, insects etc, is, as meerkat Orlov says, “simples”. But ‘er indoors then wanted something more suave, upmarket, 5 star to cater for the full range of our flying, crawling, hopping and scurrying neighbours. A framework (think skyscraper) and a couple of shelves, using scrap wood, was filled with a leaf pile, a bundle of twigs, pine cones, some bark, straw, some small rocks and some hollow canes cut into 6” pieces and tied in a bunch. This ‘rustic’ piece of engineering was then located in the little woods.
Now the swifts, house martins and swallows have disappeared, the skies have been a little empty and quieter, so attention was drawn to a cacophony of shrieks from the trees opposite as a few dozen crows and blackbirds scattered in all directions before a Sparrow Hawk hit one of them at high
speed, scattering many feathers. The victim surprisingly escaped and managed to rejoin his noisy gang. Cyril the squirrel has been making a few nut gathering visits to the hazel tree but Sammy shrew is worryingly absent.
With a smile on her face ‘er indoors said ‘ni ddylid caniatau I chi fynd allen’ so I naturally assumed it was a term of affection and sympathy after my latest toy, an extending lopper, had attacked me. The cutting end had got caught up in some high branches so all it needed was a good strong tug on the rope attached to the cutter – wrong! The rope has some elasticity in it and the tension was greater than I thought so that when the cutter pulled clear it did so with some velocity! With blood streaming down my forehead, I enquired what endearing Welsh term she had uttered – the reply “you shouldn’t be allowed out” was extremely disappointing to say the least.
Another new garden toy, a cordless strimmer, has enabled the cutting of a path through much grass and ferns which had been hiding unforeseen trip hazards on the way to the river’s edge, so now our very tanned, nature loving 84 year old neighbour can safely access the deepest pool for her regular swims.
Sitting in the garden of a friend discussing the volume of honey she extracts each year from her four hives and watching from an assumed safe distance, I concentrated on one particular hive and was hypnotised watching a few honey bees aimlessly buzzing around the entrances to the hives, except I learnt they are not random movements but a means of communicating with other bees. They have two main movements or dances, the waggle dance and the round dance which indicate to others not only which direction a food source is but how close it is.
The Griffaloes
Never take criticism from someone you wouldn’t also trust advice from. Unknown
