Decisions

Like most people I've seen the footage of the earthquake and tsunami to hit Japan and been appalled by it. This old earth that we are dependent on for life seems to be having more catastrophes than ever (or is it just that they are so well recorded nowadays?).
Without getting off-track I do wonder, although I have no facts to base this on and no scientific or geological background, if all the things we do to it have weakened it's structure. We gouge at it's surface, bleed it of oil, take it's minerals from deep inside and mess up it's environment by cutting down huge swaths of rain forest and changing it's make up for our purposes. Animals seem to have lived in harmony for millions of years with the earth, probably because they don't have the tools or capacity to change things so radically but we do things now that were unthinkable a century or two ago. I know I may sound kooky in my thoughts but I can't see how you can prod and poke something living so much and not have repercussions.
As I was singing a Beatles' song whilst taking my shower this morning I thought that maybe it's not what we take from the world that is important but what we leave behind. Whilst some people have the capacity to leave a huge legacy, the rest of us can do our small but none the less significant things too. As the saying roughly goes, "Better to remember and smile than to think of them and be sad" .
FOOTNOTE:
I must stop eating cheese at night as it seems to turn me into a street philosopher.

Morning symphony

Blimey, it's a Saturday and I'm awake by 6.00am. Where's the justice? No lie in for me today.
It is lovely that the mornings (and evenings) are getting lighter but it means I naturally wake up earlier and have to creep around in order not to wake my Sleeping Beauty (Luke). This bit of time alone before he is ready for his first coffee of the day is often spent tidying up the house as sadly I'm not one of those to whizz around in the evening, before bed, to straighten cushions and fold throws decoratively. So the morning jobs consist of collecting empty cups and picking up abandoned shoes.
This morning I loaded the dishwasher, filled the washing machine (days off are made up of these chores) then made myself a cup of tea to wander back to bed with (which is where I am now, four pillows propping me up whilst I type). About 7.00am I thought I should open up the hen house and as I walked up the garden I was almost deafened by a cacophony of bird song. From the lone magpie landing in the very bendy  top branch of a gigantic conifer two gardens away, to a cheery "Pip pip" sound from the oak tree, to the flurry of activity when I opened the door and the swaying of the feeders which were hastily abandoned upon my arrival there is a chorus of different bird song and activity all around.

I remember being on a train, late at night, coming back to Milan from Venice and passing within metres of some one's apartment where possibly their children would have been sleeping. It seemed I could almost touch their building with outstretched hands and I thought then how desperately sad that some people work hard all their lives, pay their bills, raise their children and do their best but still don't have the opportunities that others do. Working hard isn't enough; you could work long hard days and still be nowhere near to getting your dream home or enjoying a blow out holiday. Maybe that's not 'your thing', mine is just to be comfortable and not lose track of what's important to me; that's friends and loved ones and how I treat people and things along the way.
But here I am through a mixture of luck, inheritance, work, saving hard and going without lots of things our friends have (annual holidays, meals out, etc), living in a lovely house in a wonderful part of the country. Our mortgage is slightly smaller than the one the people who bought our tiny terraced house in a less salubrious area have. I hope I don't come across as pious; I'm just very grateful to be here, in a house where the first thing we hear on waking is birdsong. I think back to that high rise apartment window by Milan's train station and count my blessings that at ten thirty each night I don't have a train honking it's arrival as it passes.

Apologies.

 I've been told by my Mum that Kim, her friend, had put a comment on the blog and yet, as so often happens, nothing shows up. It's been very hit and miss with comments. I know that several friends have put comments on the blog but I've only received three in over a year so if you've put a comment on and I've 'ignored' it it's just because I haven't received it. Apologies here and now. You can get in touch if you want to via my e-mail address: suethomas77@yahoo.co.uk
If you mail me I'll get back in touch.

A nice end to a lousy day.

Work has been so busy recently and I'm trying to do so many things that sometimes I don't have the time to check out the simple pleasures in life. This afternoon though, because I'm now going to be working extra tomorrow, I got to finish at 4.30pm. So, I was straight home to let out the girls for a trot around the garden. When I let them out I found one perfect, still-just-warm egg waiting for me. I took the camera out to check on the progress in the garden and over trundled these three little bundles of fluff. I don't fool myself into thinking they are coming to see me. I know it's the food they are after and of course they nearly always get their own way and get a handful of seed. Thinking they would like a dust bath in the warmth of the greenhouse I opened up the door and straight away two of them hopped in but as I walked back to the house, lovely Shakira trotted along just behind me, like a wobbly puppy walking to heel. She got an extra handful of seed for making me laugh.
When I got online to write this, I found a lovely email to me from Luke and as I wandered around the garden I saw so many new plants forcing their way through. These are the real gifts in life for me. I'm a lucky woman.

6.30pm
Later, when I got my usual call from Luke to pick him up I went out into the garden to lock up the chickens.
 Imagine my surprise when the three girls came trundling over towards me. "What are you ladies still doing up?" I asked them as they did a U turn and ran along behind me. I found out why they were up past their bedtime when I arrived at their run. The wind had blown their door tightly shut. This was the second time today they had been affected by the high winds as earlier Buck Bucky and Sweetie were trapped in the greenhouse when the wind blew the door shut on them. Not that they minded, they are always happy to have a 'bath' in the greenhouse soil.

To encourage them back in their run and to apologise for keeping them from their perch I threw some peanuts into their run. The first two raced past the treats and hopped up onto the ramp into their house but lovely Shakira, who lives to eat, vacuumed up as many of the nuts as she could find before she joined her slimmer companions who were already on their perch, half asleep.

Bath time for the chicks.

Birds bath in dust, flicking it up and over themselves. The funniest bit is when they get up and shake themselves off; a cloud of dust expands around them. Hopefully you can play this to see the chicks having a little clean up.

A morning treat.

This morning the chicks couldn't believe their luck, they were allowed an hour of freedom before work called us. To see three bottoms high in the air first thing made me glad I wasn't suffering a hangover. But they are fluffy bottoms so it's quite sweet. More to write tonight, duty now calls and a day of work is demanded.

Eight in the evening and we had just arrived home so there was no chance of seeing our chicks or checking the garden so no news to report. We were out last evening, in Swansea, for a comedy evening and with two late nights at work this week I'm missing the fresh air and hard work of getting out and digging. Mind you I did ache after the weekend's work. We're looking forward to this weekend but hope the snow from Istanbul doesn't make it way over here.

New posts.

I've added a few new posts this evening but have kept the chat to a minimum and thought I would let the photos do the talking. After all, they are so much more wonderful than anything I could try to describe.
There are three posts, I hope you like them.

From tiny acorns mighty oaks grow.

Here are signs of life on the white lilac. 

Under that, the pink buds of Actinidia Kolomikta 

& something as yet undertermined pushing up from the earth.

Enough of me, enjoy the birds.

Here are some photographs from the weekend.  The blue tits lining up for a nut (have you seen the one of the bird in the feeder with his beak around a nut?)
Then there are the big girls. Shakira and Buck Bucky hanging about for any dropped nuts or seed from the feeders. Once they spy a bird on them they come racing over for the spoils. In the background Luke saws wood in the greenhouse.

Three different birds on the feeder. A sparrow, a blue tit and a chaffinch. Harmony at lunchtime.

Long, hard day.

You may think the life of a Librarian is a gentle one and for the most part you would be correct. Today though I've had a class of 28 seven year olds to talk to and I was at work from 7.40am till 6.50pm so there wasn't a lot of time to sit back and smell the roses.To make up for this I have got a few photos of my Christmas roses, as Hellebores are also known, to show you.
When pulling the black leaves off one of the Hellebores I accidentally pulled one of the main stems off too. A year's wait to mess it up but never mind, I've put it in a vase and have it on my window sill so I can look at it whilst washing up the dishes. Here it is before I manhandled it (along with another one I have)
.

And on the seventh day..,

Sweetie's tail 

Weren't Sundays traditionally a day of rest? Well, we bucked that trend today with a jolly good clear up and we feel fighting fit and exhilarated after a good day in the garden. Whilst Luke sawed through the trunk of the tree he had dug out last year ( a chore that took half a day) for firewood I turned over the earth in the greenhouse only to be joined by the chickens who scrabbled around in the newly dug soil. Sweetie chose the only bit of soil I hadn't turned over to have a dust bath in and once I was done with that I moved out to the stretch of earth between the greenhouse and the shed (where the buzzard had landed a couple of months ago). This area had been used as a litter tray by the cat next door and was quickly overrun with weeds throughout the wet winter months. On with the gloves, out with the fork and an hour later it was ready for the cat to visit it again.

Luke raked up lots of fallen leaves off the lawn and piled them into a little dome which Shakira, the biggest and most favourite of our chicks quickly destroyed by scratching through them all. She's forgiven everything though on the grounds that she once stole Luke's cake - whilst he was eating it. Now he thinks they are food buddies!

Next up the decking got cleaned and the wood stock tidied up then I popped out to the front garden and planted up the clematis I bought last year. You know how usually you would dig a hole for a potted plant to the same depth so that the soil would be the same level? Not so with the clematis which like to be planted slightly deeper than the level they are in the pot. I also planted up the sunny primroses I bought yesterday but have not yet done what every gardener knows needs to be done - watered them well in. Shock, horror! Just writing that has guilt tripped me into sorting that out right away. I feel like I've sent children to bed without a warm drink. Oh, the shame of it all.

Anyway, enough text - here are some of today's photos. Hope you enjoy them.

 

Shakira grubbing about in the greenhouse.

 

This was the first visit to our feeder from a green finch; inside the feeder is a cheeky blue tit who decided it was quicker to pop down the feeder and grab a entire peanut. 

(You can click on any of the photos to get a larger image.)

Here is another blue tit showing his mate how it's done.

 Shakira and Sweetie - friends again.

Weeds in the garden.

This morning I was tidying up the border and pulling up weeds when I got to thinking about how to spot a weed. There is no hard or fast rule. You can't say, if it is bright green it is a weed or anything that easy. The absolute truth is that really, as the old adage goes, there is no such thing as a weed. It's just a wrong plant in the wrong place. Unfortunate for the plant but it's YOUR garden so you should have what you want in it.
I remember about fifteen years ago walking around the docks trying to find teasels because I wanted their seed heads to provide some interest in the garden during the winter. They are also fantastic sources of food for certain birds but I wasn't bothered about that benefit back then. My Auntie was horrified at my suggestion. "What do you want those for? You'll never get rid of them once you have them; the seeds will spread and you'll be stuck with them" is what she said to me. I never did successfully pull them up out of the dock yard cracks and replant them in my garden but that's not to say I wouldn't still have them. IN fact the trend for natural gardens encourages nettles and teasels.
I wanted to find out which plants are 'official' weeds in Britain. However, when I Googled  'offical weed Britain' all I found was cannabis sites. Not exactly what I was looking for.
By changing 'weed' to plural, I did find this general information,

"Weeds are simply plants which are growing in the wrong place or behaving badly, but when they trespass in our flowerbeds or vegetable patch, they cause no end of annoyance. They are usually the native plants which are best adapted to the environment where they grow, so can easily out-compete our more delicate ornamental plants. The seeds they produce can lie dormant in the soil for many years, germinating when it is cultivated, or imported with 'new' topsoil. Even in a "wild" garden the native plants must be controlled to give the more pleasing effect we seek. "

and then I chanced upon this,

Identifying common invasive non-native plants

Three of the most invasive non-native plants are Japanese Knotweed, Giant Hogweed and Himalayan Balsam.

Japanese Knotweed

Japanese Knotweed appears to have no natural enemies in Britain and is difficult to control, tiny fragments (as little as 0.7g of its rhizome, or root) can produce a viable plant. This plant can grow as much as two centimetres per day, will grow in any type of soil, no matter how poor, and can grow through walls and concrete.
The plant forms dense clumps up to three metres in height. It has large, triangular green leaves and a hollow stem, similar to bamboo but often flecked with dark red. Japanese Knotweed produces fleshy red-tinged shoots that can reach a height of 1.5 metres by May and 3 metres by June.

Giant Hogweed

Giant Hogweed has a green stem with dark red or purple blotches and spiky dark green leaves. The plant can grow up to 5m tall and grows mainly in areas of damp soils, such as river banks.
Each flowerhead can produce up to 50,000 seeds, which are easily dispersed by water. Seeds can remain viable for up to 15 years so disposal has to be carried out very carefully.
Giant Hogweed can have adverse effects on skin following contact. Symptoms are usually noticeable within 24 hours including blisters and swelling on the skin, which may be made worse by exposure to the sun. If you feel unwell after contact with Giant Hogweed speak to your doctor.
Japanese Knotweed and Giant Hogweed are listed in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. This means that it is illegal to plant it in the wild. Waste from some non-native plants is controlled by law and so certain regulations have to be complied with when disposing of such material.

Himalayan Balsam

Himalayan Balsam was introduced into Britain in the 19th century. It has pinky red stems with dark green leaves. It grows fast and can reach 2 to 3m in height. The plant can produce large quantities of seed in exploding capsules that can throw seed several metres.

Five particular plants are classified as 'injurious', or harmful weeds under the Weeds Act 1959. These five plants are:

• Common Ragwort
• Spear Thistle
• Creeping or Field Thistle
• Curled Dock
• Broad-Leaved Dock"