While conservation organisations would like us to do nothing during the winter in the gardens and green areas we manage, that is a bit too utopian to be feasible. Don't cut anything back until the spring they say, but then in the spring you mustn't cut stuff back because it is nesting season, you must wait until high summer. Except you mustn't cut back things in the summer, when they are flowering and fruiting and providing nourishment for wildlife, but then in the autumn you mustn't cut things back either as things need seeds and protected areas to shelter and hibernate in. If you follow that reasoning, of course, you never do anything and a wild area becomes a place of impenetrable scrub which nothing much likes. The birds don't even eat the blackberries and they shrivel up on the briars and are very itchy if you get them on your skin or down your shirt. This is not vibrant wild land!
So, John has been strimming it back, keeping an eye out for wildlife, but seeing none, not even a duck on the pond hidden in all that skank. The toads will be abroad soon, and later in the summer, the dragonflies will be on patrol, but otherwise those are quite uninteresting ponds (or so I think, but I will do some dipping later in the year).
In addition, we have pruned one of the juicing apple trees - it was so overgrown with branches crossing, that it was impossible for the apples to fall off! We removed the branch with the massive mistletoe - we have others, so don't need that one, and cut out a lot of wood, including dead branches. Many were weighed down with moss and lichen, so that it was hard to tell the primary function of the tree!
The signs of spring are ever more visible, although there is a lot of weather to go first I suspect. In sheltered spots of the ground there are narcissi up and in some cases, flowering. I had forgotten where I planted a load of anemone bulbs last autumn, but they are now showing, and I really didn't think I planted them through a poppy! The late woodland snowdrops are coming up, with one flower bud to show for it, and the garlic I planted a few days ago in a low polytunnel are showing decent sized shoots. But things are later than last year, as there are no cowslip flowers up yet.
There are orchids everywhere!
And then there have been storms. Dudley was too far north to affect us. Eunice meant we had some reasonable squalls of wind and rain on Friday, but fortunately nothing much over 75kmph or so - nasty if you were out in it. Franklin or whatever he is called means we have annoying gusts that hit my office roof with an alarming sound, but again not too bad. On Monday we had thunderstorms though, which are a bit rare at this time of year. There were lightening strikes within a kilometre of the house and heavy rain - not much fun!
Bad weather means it isn't easy to get scaffolding up, so we would respectfully request some nice, dull weather so that the masons can get the frame up and do what needs to be done to the chimney! Hopefully there will be news on that next week!
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