Mellow Fruitfulness

 Proof that it is definitely autumn is the appearance of a delicate toadstool on the lawn.

At the same time all sorts of hips and berries are turning bright red, keeping colour going even though many flowers are fading.

Different birds seem to like different berries. There was a time, in a previous garden, where greenfinches used to gorge on the rose hips. The best we can do is provide food and see what does or does not turn up. Our pears are very popular with foxes, which certainly pick off what they can reach, night after night. This reinforces the message not to use pesticides. I have this year put a barrier of netting round the small plum tree, which seems to have worked. Last year small branches were broken off!

I have recently finished digging over a small patch of lawn to make a flower bed. I was very pleased to discover plenty of centipedes. On the relevant RHS web page one of the first things it says is: "Part of a healthy garden eco-system". Their main food is the sort of bugs that eat your plants. 

The bird-life in the garden is moving on away from the spring and summer pattern. In that last week I have seen the first robin and the first coal tit noticed since April. There's lots to see if you look. Meanwhile I am not sure if the baby frogs have left the pond and immediately found excellent hiding places; I hope so. 

Late Summer

 The most obvious feature of late summer is the ripening of fruits. Gardening books have advice on how to deal with pests and diseases. I have yet to read one that advises how to dissuade a fox from taking pears and plums, usually then scattering them around with one bite taken out. However, there are still plenty of pears and plums for us. In the explicitly wild bit of the garden the brambles that have turned up behind the pond have fruited excellently this year.

There have been many more than are in this photo, but grandchildren are even more rapacious than foxes.

I did not plan to make a hedge, but the bank of earth dug while excavating the pond has become one. Two wild roses (bought), this bramble, and a raspberry (just turned up) are flourishing so much that they need cutting back. This is a happy reminder of hedging along a country lane in my childhood. Some of the not-native plants have good berries too, already. I have known this cotoneaster stripped by woodpigeons in previous years. 

So long as you never use pesticides, many non-native plants will add to the wildlife resources of a garden.

The tadpoles in our pond have not yet emerged as baby frogs. They can't be hurried. At least I am sure that they have plenty of places to hide once they do emerge. If last year's hatching is anything to go by, some of them will find our garden a place to live. 

One hazard they encounter is neighbourhood cats. One of these creatures amuses itself by touching frogs from behind and making them jump.

The small birds seem to be reluctant to go to the feeders just now - maybe it is moulting time, when they try to stay under cover. But I did happen to see a flock of long-tailed tits pass through the area; always welcome. As far as I can see they roam around, never staying in one garden for long.

Some of the flowers in the "wild" section are inspired by things I love to see on holidays. These scabious I grew from seed after coming back from Wester Ross a couple of years ago. Bumble bees seem to like them, and it is important to keep fresh blooms, with nectar and pollen, going all though the spring and summer months. (Apologies for the poor photo)

Possibly in terms of helping wild nature and biodiversity the invertebrate mini-beasts are as important as anything. There is no shortage of habitats. Our insect house may or may not house a mason bee or two in any given year, but I lifted the lid the other day and look what was sheltering there. 

There is no limit to the fun you can get from a wild-life garden.

High summer

 The last day of July. After some fairly strenuous gardening (not in the "wild" garden patch) I sat peacefully in what the poet calls "a bee-loud glade". There were at least three varieties of bumblebee - possibly four or five. But I do not claim skill at identification. Some were on the knapweed in the wild patch. Some were on the sunflowers. There were several popular plants. I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again - never use insecticide.

A few days ago we were away for a fortnight, Our Edinburgh heatwave was much less severe than many places, but still I wondered what I might find when I came back. None of the plants looked much the worse, but the pond was nearly empty. I used all the available tubs of water to refill it as much as possible, and the next day I breather a sigh of relief when I saw a tadpole wriggling. I wonder how many baby frogs will eventually crawl out. Meanwhile quite a few adults take advantage of our water features on these hot days.

The pond plants for summer are doing well. There is far too much water mint. But the single plant of purple loosestrife is magnificent - and popular with bees.

Some of my plant photos are not worth posting. There is a good show of heath bedstraw and some attractive cornflower from the wildflower annual seed packet. One of the best has just turned up - officially a "weed" in many places. here it is.

Ragwort

Some pond-life

The little pond is getting seriously overgrown with forget-me-nots and with mint, even though I though I had thinned them out pretty thoroughly in March. One learns from experience. Next year....

However, I did manage to do a little pond-dipping this afternoon and photographed the results.

There are lots of these snails. I imported a few to keep the algae down, and they have multiplied many-fold. They are also keeping the algae down very well. The other day a pond-dip pulled out a little pod of their eggs - a blob of jelly about the size of a swallowable capsule pill. Under a microscope I was surprised to see that the tiny dots were not in fact eggs, but miniature snails - as far as I could tell. Here's an adult.

I was surprised to find a different sort of snail, with a spiral shell.

There were also lots of water fleas - daphnia. They are the little orange creatures, swimming about. They are very prolific and, I think, help provide food for the tadpoles.

Finally, on this brief look, there were some flatworms. I'm not sure how big they grow. At the moment they are small.

I have no certain knowledge about how any of these, except the first sort of snail, got into the pond. Presumably they were in the roots of some of the plants that were purchased. A good idea with a larger pond is to bring in some pond mud, and maybe some weed, from some wild pond. My stretch of water is so small that I decided not to overcrowd it. 

One other observation today was a big ants nest. I lifted a couple of flagstones as part of some reorganisation, and this is what I found. 

 You can see a cluster of eggs, and also a lot of young ants growing wings, almost ready to fly off in the sort of cloud that can spatter car windscreens. The speed with which the workers bundled the eggs and the immature wingy ants underground was wonderful to watch. All the wild life in the garden is wonderful to watch. At this time of year there is masses to see.

Mid-summer

 The garden is ablaze with flowers - not all of them native. But this blog is about the native ones. The thyme in the rockery is suddenly in full flower. It is very attractive to pollinators.

So is the birdsfoot trefoil. 

The attempt to set up a miniature meadow, 2metres by 1 metre, has this year turned into more grasses with beautiful heads than flowers. However the ox-eye daisies have spread to the neighbouring flower bed, so vigorously that some of them have had to be weeded out. 

The goldfinches, perhaps the prettiest things in the garden, refuse to eat anything but sunflower hearts. Now that the shop has run out they have moved away for the moment. Our regulars - magpies, woodpigeons and sparrows - keep coming. Also we undoubtedly have a young family of starlings (there were none at all over the winter). On the other hand whereas we did have a pair of blackbirds over the winter we now have none at all. Perhaps their nest has been raided. Local predators include the magpies, a sparrow hawk, urban foxes and one or two cats. We have a high-powered water pistol to discourage cats, but it brings only the briefest respite.

One thing I hope the birds like, or will like as it grows, is the shrubs behind the pond. I did not call it a hedge, for it is so short, but it is getting a bit like one. The two sorts of wild rose have to be cut back.

Their flowers blew off yesterday, but we can expect lots of rose-hips soon. The brambles and the raspberries have just turned up, but they are very welcome, by bees as well as by us.

At the moment these plants seem to provide a lurking place for those cats I would like rid of. But such is normal life for the wildlife gardener.

365 Days Wild

 This is June, the month of 30 days Wild. What an excellent project that is. I am trying to identify a different invertebrate every day. So far I have exposed my hopeless inability to identify bumblebees - they won't stay still - and the utter impossibility of identifying the clouds of small flies passing up and down over a small stretch of the Water of Leith. I did triumphantly count two spots on a ladybird.

Meanwhile in the garden wild flowers are staring to blossom. So are non-native flowers, and they can be an important part of a wildlife habitat too, but they are not the subject of this blog. As soon as I established the little pond I bought some Water forgetmenots, Myosotis scorpioides.

I also bought some Water avens, Geum rivale. They, interestingly, have moved a little from where I planted them and are flourishing all the better for it.

Most interesting is a Ragged robin, Lychnis flos-cuculi. (Apologies for the poor photo.) This has turned up where none was sown or planted. I think it must have self seeded from one which I did have at the other end of the pond, where it was crowded out; and so I have moved it to another water feature (known as the ditch) which is not wilded. 

They are a plant I particularly like, I think from associations with childhood - one of the flowers my mum showed me.

Another of those flowers is the Welsh poppy, Meconopsis cambrica. This has grown freely in the garden since before we bought the house. They grow prolifically as a weed - may well be a "garden escape" - and are removed ruthlessly from the rose beds.. But they are worth a place in any uncultivated corner.

One of the great pleasures of June, and of retirement, is sitting in the sun in the garden enjoying the flowers. If some of them are reminders of happy days in the country, that is surely a bonus.

World Bee Day

 If you are reading these posts you probably do not need me to tell you how important bees are. The main thing is not the production of honey (I like it; I've just had some for lunch) but the work of pollination. Perhaps just as important is the whole ethical objection to the extinction of species. As John Donne famously said: "Every man's death diminishes me". His wise words can readily be extended to all life on earth.

What can we small gardeners do, managing a plot the size of half a tennis court or less? The answer is "A very great deal", for all our half tennis courts in one city add up to hundreds of acres, and across the world to an incalculably vast estate. 

Two years ago, when we were confined to our homes by lockdown (and Partygate was raging) I made a determined effort to identify the bumblebee that came into our garden. This was the result:

The feeble inadequacy of the research speaks for itself. but at least I was led to appreciate better the range of bumblebees that use our garden. I do take comfort from two things. One is that my "Collins Guide to Insects" says: " the identification of all castes is complicated by marked regional colour variations". The other is that, after I had rejected Bombus hypnoroum on the grounds that it did not come nearly as far north as Edinburgh, my daughter (who used to work for Buglife) said "Oh, their range has extended northwards". So if, like me, you have trouble with identification, just enjoy looking at the bees, and marvelling at their variety, beauty and industry.

One thing you can do for bees is get one of those insect houses. Here is mine.

You can see how some of the holes are plugged with mud. This will probably where Osmia rufa, the mason bee ("there are many similar species" says my book), has laid eggs. This one has got rather overgrown, so I have had a go at making one. It has so far been less successful for bees, though I hope various invertebrates may have found other uses for it. Remember that bumblebees hibernate, so holes of all sorts - in walls, or log-piles or moss - may be useful to them. And there are lots of bees apart from bumble bees.

The most important single thing all small gardeners can do is never use pesticides. We don't need to. Of course, it is irritating when a seedlings is eaten off by snails, or slugs take a bite out of a lettuce leaf. But try encouraging frogs, insect-eating birds, hover flies and so on. A balance will soon be established - and part of the balance is that you put up with a few holes in your crops. 

The other thing, of course, is to have plenty of flowers for bees to feed from. Yesterday in the hot sun (not today) I saw a dozen small bumble bees getting at the raspberry flowers very early, before the flowers were properly out. They were so small I wondered if they were a different species from the big queens that emerged from hibernation towards the end of March. But that useful insect book explains: "Some early spring workers are very small and it is hard to believe that they belong to the same species as the queens." I love it when a book by an expert fits my own observations.

I have already mentioned the annual wild flower seeds we give out (my organisation, as a matter of fact) we give out at our church. This year's sowing are not nearly flowering yet. But one feature of these seeds (Scotia Seeds "Cornfield Annual Mix) is that they readily self-seed. This row in front of our house is in an ideal spot and never sown by human hand. And look, they are in flower already, food for bees long before this year's sowings are available.