Jack in the Box

For the past three evenings I have had a new squirrel coming to the garden for his tea. I believe he may come very early in the morning with his mum but in the evening he arrives on his own and his behaviour is very amusing and well worth watching.
Last evening for instance, it took him ages to climb from the low roof at the end of the garden onto the fence and as I watched him from an upstairs window I thought he looked as if he was scared of heights! He dithered and went backwards and forwards several times as though he were looking for an easy way to get down onto the fence and once there he appeared to 'freeze' as if he was getting up courage to make the short jump over to the corner so that he could then climb down the trellis into the garden.
Eventually he makes it to the nut box but he obviously hasn't been paying attention to his mum because instead of sitting on the lid of the box once he's got his peanut, he sits on the narrow shelf in the front and so consequently loses his balance and falls off. After this had happened several times on Friday he tried to keep the lid open but it kept falling onto his head so he ended up sitting in the box. When he had finished his peanut he decided the only way to stop his head being bashed was to slide into the box and sit there but the problem came when he had finished. He twisted round and tried to climb onto the lid but got his back foot caught in the box!
Now he has his very own method of avoiding falling off or getting caught. He stands on the shelf in front facing the box, lifts the lid and sticks his head in and eats his peanuts with his head inside the box while balancing the lid of the box on his head so that it doesn't bash him.
He has repeated this last behaviour for the last three nights so I have decided to call him 'Jack in the Box'!

Another survivor rescued!

Late last year where my landlady had removed the garden at the side of the house, I found a rather strange plant squeezing up through the hardcore that she had had put down. I wasn't sure what it was because the leaves and their formation were not any that I recognised although it did resemble a bearded iris so I carefully extracted it and planted it in the back garden to see what would develop.
The plant settled in and survived the winter then started to grow when the spring came with some warm sunshine. It still looked like an iris but the leaves weren't quite thick enough so still I waited to see what it was. Two weeks ago it started to send up what appeared to be a flower spike so I waited eagerly for the flowers to appear and by now I knew it wasn't a bearded iris but it was something that I had never come across before.
Then on Friday, the first little flower began to open. It was a delicate yellow and rather small but still totally unfamiliar to me so I stuck my head in the books to see what it was. I went all the way through one of my wild flower books first, thinking it may be a wild flower that I hadn't encountered before even though I have a fairly extensive knowledge of our native species, but it wasn't there.
Eventually I found out what it was in the second of my horticultural books. It is a sisyrinchium striata and I have never seen one of these either in the local garden centre or any garden around here so I have no idea how it got to where I found it. Now it's thriving so I shall continue to nurture it because it deserves to be allowed to grow.

What's clever and too cute for it's own good?

The answer is a squirrel. We all know that the squirrel is a very intelligent creature and that it doesn't take long for it to work out how to get the peanuts even if they are at the end of an obstacle course!
The squirrels that visit my garden don't have to go through an obstacle course because I have been very kind and bought them their own peanut box which I screwed underneath the bird table so that they can eat in the dry if it's raining. They didn't take long to work out that they couldn't get the nuts through the perspex front but had to lift the lid and they've all done very well. That is until last spring when a young one was brought to the garden. This young squirrel was too busy exploring and did not watch his parents when they were feeding so when they had finished and were sitting on the fence in the sunshine, the youngster got up on the top of the box and he could see the nuts but couldn't get them. He started to vandalise the top of the little wooden box by tearing strips off it in his anger! Mum and Dad went off leaving him to it so I had to go outside to show him how it worked!
He scurried up the garden and peeped over the top of the fence watching me with interest. I showed him how to lift the lid then I put a peanut on the bird table. This was repeated several times and all the time he watched. When I came inside it wasn't long before he ventured down the path and climbed up onto the peanut box again. After looking all over it he gingerly put his head under the flap of the lid and found out that he could lift it up. Helping himself to a peanut, he sat on the little shallow shelf in the front but Mum and Dad usually sat on the top of the box because there is more room. Of course he fell off a couple of times and I tried not to laugh out loud from my vantage point in the kitchen but I thought he would soon learn and he did.
Yesterday morning however, I came downstairs at six thirty, put the kettle on to make a cup of tea and when I pulled open the curtains there was a squirrel hanging upside down on the metal bird feeder. They have done this before and as I watched this one it gripped the bottom of the feeder and started to twist it's body while gripping the top with it's back legs. After about ten seconds it gave one big twist and managed to unscrew the lid so that the metal basket fell to the floor scattering the peanuts. The squirrel jumped down with guilty look and surveyed the nuts on the ground.
I went outside in my pyjamas and picked up the basket and put most of the nuts back then hung the feeder back in it's place, all the while being watched by a very surprised squirrel peeping over the top of the fence!
Now it's found out how to do this I am keeping my fingers crossed that it won't make a habit of unscrewing the birds' peanut feeder.

Pretty birds but messy eaters!

I have found it so hard to get a good picture of my goldfinches because every time I pick the camera up when the kitchen door is open, the wind blows and the picture ends up out of focus. Also, I try hard not to move so as not to disturb them but that's quite hard to do when I'm trying to get the camera in the right position! Anyway, there is one above but hopefully I will be able to get more throught the summer.
One thing I must do is buy some more thistle seed tomorrow because it goes very fast indeed. Unfortunately, as much ends up on the ground as inside the birds and it's also starting to grow so I have to spend quite a bit of time pulling up the seedlings as I don't want a garden full of thistles!
The design of the feeder is not very good, I think it needs some sort of receptacle underneath because these little dears don't get down onto the ground to feed and the other birds don't seem to be very partial to thistle seed.

We've got babies!

For a week or so the squirrels, the local sparrows and the other birds have been almost been eating me out of house and home! This is probably because they are all rearing their young and have been busy with the new arrivals.
The first real sign that young had arrived was Mrs Squirrel who came over a couple of weeks ago looking very scrawny, with a sparse tail and coat. I noticed that she was coming over twice a day and she is now plumper and fluffier and it is very apparent that she is feeding young. Obviously the peanuts and other food she is enjoying have helped her back into condition. Mr squirrel usually comes a little while after she has been and sits on the fence digesting his dinner and occasionally the two of them arrive to dine together.
When I got back from the surgery this afternoon one of the sparrows had two of her young on the bird table. While she was busy stuffing food into the mouth of one of them the other was trying to feed itself but wasn't quite sure what to do with the seed. After five minutes or so she took them both to the bird bath where I thought she was going to show them how to drink but she chirped to them and to my surprise, they both got in and had a good bath! When they had finished, she took them up onto the fence to preen their feathers and dry out. So with the kids fed, bathed and preened she went off with them.
It won't be long before the magpies have their young out in the early morning giving them flying lessons. Last year as soon as the sun was up they would have them flying from one side of the road to the other encouraged by constant loud 'clacking' as encouragement which woke me up very early every morning well before my alarm was due to go off.
I love this time of year when there is so much going on in the garden and so many new 'families' visiting me.

Rain at last!

This year we have had very little rain and temperatures much higher than normal so spring has been over fairly quickly and summer has arrived about a month earlier than usual. This has meant that the roses have been flowering at the same time as the early clematis and wallflowers, the new tomato plants have shot up and the herbs are already filling their pots so I have been able to use them in the kitchen. I have also had to water the pots and garden so that the plants didn't die.
On Friday I picked up Amber, Eden's older sister, as she was going to spend the weekend with me because Eden was going to a party. We got home and as the evening went on the skies got very heavy with cloud but we didn't get any rain. Amber spoke to Sarah on the phone during the evening and they had had a thunderstorm where they live which is only about twenty five miles away.
When we went to bed it was still very warm so I left my bedroom window open and quite soon after I could hear the rain as it started. There is something good about the smell of warm rain after a long dry spell and the sound of water trickling down the drainpipe soon sent me off to sleep.
It rained steadily throughout the night and we had some prolonged showers on Saturday too. Not nearly enough really, but today I was surprised at how much some of the plants have grown after having a proper drink rather than the water from the tap!
We are supposed to have more showers this week but we have a long way to go to catch up and unless we get a lot more steady rain I think there could be shortages of some fruit and vegetables later in the year. The price of grains will also go up which has the knock on effect of increasing the prices of food. I'll have to start doing a few 'rain dances'!

Breaking out!

For some time I have had a rosemary growing in a large pot outside the back door and I know that it has been pot bound for a couple of years. As I have another smaller one in another pot that I want to plant in the garden, I thought I would move the larger one out the front.
I don't have a front garden but there is a triangular area beside the parking spaces in the home zone outside. At Christmas the workmen had to replace the kerb corners which were pointed and breaking and they put some rounded off corner slabs in their place. Of course, they destroyed the plants that were growing on the corner and there has been a bald patch there which looked unsightly so I thought the rosemary could have a new home there because it gets the sun all day and there is plenty of room for it to spread.
As the soil is so heavy I enlisted the help of a young neighbour who helped me by digging the hole. When it was large enough we tried to get the plant out of the pot but it was stuck fast and wouldn't even move a tiny bit. We tried everything and even used a large knife to cut down round the inside of the pot but the plant still refused to budge.
There was nothing for it but to break the pot and a couple of hefty whacks with the spade did the trick. The roots were packed so tightly around the pot that I was surprised it hadn't broken the pot and I think the only thing that stopped it was the thickness of the pot.
Eventuallt the rosemary was planted in it's new home and watered well in. Now it looks as if it has always been there and I hope that it will soon spread it's roots and grow bigger.