A little light tidying up

It is that time of year again; days get shorter, evenings milder, and things need a bit of a tidy up before winter gets here.

Yesterday was the escallonia hedge by the garage/workshop. Virginia Woolf had a fondness for escallonia, I'm not so sure. It has the most annoying habit of sending out great long bushy shoots with bee friendly clusters of flowers right at the very tip. It makes the car jump each time I park it. My preference would be for the hedge to evoke the smooth and rolling Downs, but I haven't yet found a pruning regime that encourages this (the Woolf's gardener at Talland House knew better, but I'll bet bees never frequented those straight tidy hedges). I tolerate the untidiness because oh the bees do love the flowers. My compromise this year is to take off shoots which were tickling the car door and bonnet, but leave those long ones at the top so the bees still have some nectar. I'll take those out once flowering has really finished and tidy it all up.

It does look much neater now, apart from the Fraggle Rock hairdo!

Yesterday the Japanese anemone in the back garden promised me good gardening weather. Today there was less sun, but it was also cooler.

First, another result of being too tolerant. There is a veritable forest of little fennel plants gleefully sprouting in the gravel. They smelt delicious as I plucked them up.

One of my favourite flowers, Love-in-a-Mist, popped themselves here from next door, much to my delight. I love the straight stems and contrast between the soft buff of the seedpods against the dark fence ..... but they really should come down

After that, I created a little bower where cyclamen peep out at the bottom of the tree, and black cats snooze. Can you see him?

Perhaps here?

Definitely here!

Happy cat

garden regulars

A couple of shots from the past two days.

This young fox has bee a regular in the past several months, sometimes with a sibling, sometimes with (we assume) Mum and sometimes with both. It is such a pleasure to watch them grow from the fluffy stage towards teenage sleekness I think he or she is assessing the water in the bird bath. Obviously popular as a couple of weeks ago we found the whole thing on its side on the path, and imagined with amusement the vulpine alarm as the thing toppled and spilled water everywhere! A quick hop, skip and scamper we suspect

And these avian folk are regular visitors. Columbus sits at the top of his tree with wife or child, awaiting The Man's delivery of breakfast. 

and the ring necked doves are often to be found sunning themselves on the back of the "cricket chair", always a pair, though we usually have a group of up to six wandering round, awaiting breakfast. 

Best go chivvy The Man to his morning tasks

in the pink

The garden is rewarding us hugely at the moment, despite the incredibly dry season. Spring always seems to be very much about blue and yellow. Early summer in our garden brings a lot of pink in all its forms.

The roses are being remarkable

The paeony is just about holding its own

Then there are actual "pinks" starting to fade a little with lack of water

In geographical mood there is the deep magenta of knautia macedonica

and the wonderful gladiolus byzantinus by the pond, being admired by the little water boy - I love the way it sings with the blue of the geranium

More magenta from the lychnis, which always threatens to take over, but which was, apparently, my father's favourite plant so I allow it free reign in memory of him

and the self seeded opium poppy with its sculptural seedheads, much loved by the bees 

There are, of course, other colours out there, but I thought you'd enjoy a bit of pink

The weather has been incredibly dry, no rain for about a month, though there might be some in the next couple of days. Because we have the pond and several other drinking stations dotted about, we have had continuous activity from our local birds including this delicate little goldcrest taking an early morning bath

and the goldfinch who pours out his glorious rippling song from the top of the spruce

I was lucky enough to catch s flash of blue as the jay took off for the peanut feeder - a quicker shutter speed would have helped!

and there has been a lot of scampering under the garden seats by these two squirrels - now I wonder what that's all about!

I hope you have enjoyed a little snippet of garden colour from this hot and dry corner of the Sussex coast

New Year freshness

I'm not much of one for New Year's resolutions, they always seem to come with intimations of failure in their wake. However, I do try to keep up my resolve during the year to do things. One of those is to walk by the seaside reasonably regularly, for the good of my health and for the good of my inner self. Today our sea was really rather excitable, with the wind whistling so hard across the water that the sturdy railings were buzzing and vibrating in their housings. Great rafts of sea foam were collected, trembling and undulating on the shoreline or blowing across the promenade. 

Definitely no boats, or folk, on the water today

Dogs with their trusty walkers were at serious risk of losing their ears and the sunshine was sparkling in and out of the racing dark clouds.

The seagulls really seemed to be playing joyfully in the buffeting air

Walking in an easterly direction was aided by the following wind, but walking back to the car was very invigorating indeed. I arrived home windswept and freshened and wandered into the sitting room just in time to catch this spot of calmness as our resident woodpecker helped himself to a little lunch.

I expect he has tucked himself away somewhere safe now as the forecast rain is beginning to lash against the windowpanes.

Winter visitors

 As said before, it has been chilly in the south recently

With the bird bath often frozen, local birds have been making use of the rill, waterfall, cascade, whatever we call the mechanism for delivering moving water into the pond below. I was amusing myself by watching one of the very fat wood pigeons trying to give himself a bath with not enough depth to do so. He flew off and I was just about to carry on with morning tasks when at least three of these little delights arrived.

I wouldn't have recognised them but for a recent message from my good friend Steph who also had some in her garden. They are redwings, a thrush relative who visits the UK over winter. I was delighted to see their pleasure in finding some running water to drink, and obviously at least one of them is stil begging for food from mum, so must be from this year's brood. 

We have plenty of holly and yew berries for them to feed on in the garden, so hopefully I will be seeing them again.

Aren't they a delight?

Solstice passed

Sunrise warms the winter oaks as the moon drifts down behind them

I am always cheered as we pass the winter solstice and know that the days will lengthen from now on. These trees are visible from my morning chair, over the top of our well and across three gardens. They face east and so always catch the morning sun, changing their faces from a dark silhouette, through spreading limbs of fiery red and gold as the sun rises, to finally become grey lichen decorated trees. They are big, the one you can see here has a brother to the right, just on the edge of the image. They are also protected trees, for which I am very glad, as they are quite close to a 1908's block of flats and run the risk of being unpopular with the residents. They are of course, the home of woodpeckers, green and greater spotted, tree creepers, tail flicking crows and chatty jackdaws at morning and evening and, as night falls, the source of tawny owl calls, male and female, chatting away through the the evening's gloaming.

An Open Garden

This coming Saturday we are opening our garden in aid of a local hospice which is dear to my heart. It is the first time we have done so, and I keep looking round hoping to manage another area of weeding before the day. Because of physical frailties I tend to pace myself in the garden, so can never achieve as much as I would like. An hour's session will exhaust me but I work slowly and thoroughly and hope to make a difference. My dear heart has similar problems due to age and old sporting injuries, so we do as much as we can and accept that this is not a show place. But is is our space, and we love it, and find it a very restorative and restful environment. We share it with a variety of folk as you know, wild and tame.

The vixen, who is keeping a close eye on us, 

while her babies are a little bemused to find these human folk down in their Dell

The cat chaps, on the other hand, are happy just chilling

Down in the Dell the rambling rose, which clambers all the way up a tall ash tree, is opening it's trusses of white flowers, filling the evening air with their scent. 

The greenhouse holds all sorts of growing things, and the bean rows catch the evening sunlight

Poppies and blue geranium make a lovely contrast

The bed by the new shed is looking just right for folk to peer at

And the ferns by the pond and in the fernery are bringing beautiful colour and texture to delight the eye

I love the contrast between those plump as pillows paeony and the little cushions of the knautia - the bees do too

and our red rose near the house is just beginning to open up its petals, 

Self portrait with cat :-)

I hope our visitors on Saturday enjoy our garden as much as we do, and don't notice too many weeds!