… you ate all my fruit.
OK, so the fruit is not in full production but in holding pots awaiting a proper home this autumn. So far you’ve had the Gloire de Sablon pink currants, the one ripening All Gold raspberry, and between yesterday and today all 6 red not quite ripe Whinham Industry gooseberries. Plus I found you had been into the living room and pooped on the sofa – not nice. It’s all very cute looking at me with your limpid round black eye, all speckley feathered, teetering on the edge of a plant pot with those dainty little feet. And I saw you this morning cheekily taking a bath sitting on a waterlily pad, but this take, take, take, will have to stop! Well actually apart from the blackberries you’ve already taken the lot!
We’re surrounded by young birds various at the moment trying to make their way in the world it seems. A young Carrion Crow tells the young Magpies where to get off when it comes to first dibs on the bird table, although the cheeky Magpies were teasing (not mobbing) the crow just now in one of the trees, the crow eventually flapped off in a huff. We’ve got a plethora of robins, and at least 1 wren still feeding fledged young, Bullfinches various hold court on the sunflower seeds. Gangs of Long Tailed Tits can be heard and sometimes spotted, the Starlings and Jackdaws though appear to have taken themselves off into the wider countryside. Saw a Barn Owl swoop low over the field in the dimming light last night and the Tawny Owl babes are still calling loudly and testily for food.
We’ve had rain today, and hail and thunder and everything. The rain has been missing us for days but today a welcome downpour, the temperature has dropped somewhat.
The picture above shows Kniphofia Tawny King which in the last garden didn’t support itself terribly well, but standing to attention here. The Digitalis ferruginea is now in flower, the bees busily clambering aboard each lipped landing platform. (22/7/14 Actually I think I must correct myself, D laevigata was first in flower and shown above although I do have D ferruginea but he is brown lipped, D laevigata has a pale lip).
The Brugmansia is doing it’s thing, the scent is just starting to ramp up for the evening, vying with Lonicera halliana and Nicotiana alata. It’s unattractively festooned with Bioline packs to try to combat spider mites.
Beware fried toads in empty ceramic pots. Sadly a few weeks ago I found a desiccated toad which had somehow climbed into an empty plant pot and then couldn’t get out. On Sunday morning, drowning not waving a toad was seen stretching up trying to get out of another empty pot as the sun warmed up, needless to say it was released.