An odd turn in the spring weather. Thank goodness no veg seedlings have gone out yet. Add a month to all timetables now and ignore the misleading March clemency.
All daffodils bar the very late, tall, yellow one-colour trumpets are over now, with seed heads which must be picked to avoid them coming up blind next year. They were quickly out in that warm weather but the season was short, unlike last year when the mild December caused them to open early and then they kept going to March.
Primroses abound in the field headlands, sides of the drainage ditches, road verges and under trees in my garden. Bluebell greenery is showing but no heads yet.
The hawthorn and blackthorn is in blossom in the hedges and the standard willow has furry buds on the go all round the fields. Weeping willow is showing that light emerald flicker on the woody stems. The general country backdrop colour is shifting from brown to green.
But this cold snap has suddenly frightened the fruit blossom. Cherry is in full bloom but dropping off in the hail, sleet and morning frosts. Earlier apples (russet) had blossom appearing but have taken fright so only half out. Damson, Victoria Plum and Greengage were in full blossom a week ago and who knows if they were pollinated before this hail and cold rain. I was going to say it’s looking like a good fruit year but now I’m not too sure. Pear trees (Conference) and later apples (Cox OP, Bramley, Worcester Pearmain etc) all still to come. Fanned Peach was in multiples flower and is thinking what have I done? We need a warm April / May to rescue this.
In the herb bed the chives, sage, lemon thyme, mint and fennel have been bursting out with that soft pale green first growth of spring, but now they pausing in panic and present as super food for slugs and snails which woke up last month and have been at it con gusto. They’ve taken tops off the emerging alliums in the main beds too. It is time to take action. Because the birds are not raising chicks yet, but are still in the preparatory nesting phase, they are not controlling this snail bloom.
A pioneering two magnolia flowers went too early and the other buds on the M. Stellata (pretty clean and small white star flower not big and showy pink M Grandiflora) have declined to open. I hope they don’t get frosted before properly out or they open brownish.
The winter flowering prunus has announced spring by having one final push of blossom then dropping the lot in 48 hours, like pink snow, all over the lawn to make way for leaf buds.
Oaks come in a range of subspecies which behave differently. I have two old ones next to each other that have quite different characteristics. One traditional wide girthed English oak dropped its leaves in autumn as it should and is now considering its reply to the weather change. Another, slimmer and taller, behaves like a hornbeam or beech. It holds a lot of brown leaves on lower branches until the ‘spring drop’ which is happening now. As the sap re-enters the branch tips it pushes off its own residual leaf growth, finally, leaving a daily dose of autumn-looking brown oak leaves on the lawn.
There are a lot of dead or dying bumble bees about. The warm weather got them moving about but the cold and damp has seen to them, and they lie about, rigor mortis leaving them looking like scrunched up little failed robots. I hope some queens stayed in the nests.
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It's like roffing with Pop Larkin
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Pop Larkin got laid a lot tho
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Now get this honky, you go tell Rafael that I ain’t taking no jive from no Western Union messenger.
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Heh @ all responses
Pop Larkin got a lot of it, didn’t he.
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As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
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Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
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We do not have "fall".
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I wonder if Mutters likes to watch?
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no. When it comes to the garden, I just like being there
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You're quite the poet Mutters. Away with the fairies is another description.
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My Pixierosso has just started to bloom, but the Cox's Orange Pippin remains bare but for a few buds. The cherry is half-frothed with blossom. Lots of foilage from the bulbs but no colour yet, although a clematis that stubbornly refused to bloom for years has suddenly burst into flower and the pansies and violets have gone nuts.
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Great posts from Mutts above, imho. Clearly cribbed from scrapbookeed cuttings of 'Nature Notebook' etc, but appreciated nonetheless.
Oh - whoever bigged up Marzano tomatoes, ta - I'm giving them a go this year.
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I tried those last year. Definitely worth it.
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Good to know.
Are they literally 'chop up and use' without skinning? Got mixed reports but most say no need to skin first.
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I don't bother skinning them.
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Ta.
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Srsly who tf can be arsed to skin a tomato
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Me if I'm using fresh ones in some pasta sauces and other recipes.
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Just eat the skin u massive fanoir
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I do usually.
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I also fear for my cherry output this year as a result of all this recent unpleasantness.
Fingers crossed.
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Clearly cribbed from scrapbookeed cuttings of 'Nature Notebook' etc,
fook right off with that nonsense.
Written in quiet contemplation on the commute. A form of meditation and resistance of the urban transformation I was undergoing as I got closer to work.
San Marzano are particularly delicious if grown in the volcanic soil and hot sun of southern Italy. In English gardens not under glass they can be as rubbish as all the others. But you may get lucky.
To peel a tomato is an enormous faff unless you have the skillz that make it simple. Take a bowl of boiling water and a bowl of iced water. Score the bottom end (not where the greenery attaches) with a sharp knife twice so you get a small + shape through the skin but do not puncture the flesh. Drop it in for 30 seconds in the boiling water then pluck it out Marvel as it then splits and the skin then rises away from the flesh. Then drop it into iced water to stop it cooking. You can then just take the skin away no probs.
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I've had very little in blossom so far, and as the garden is an a very exposed site it is designed and adapted to cold wind.
All will be well in the garden
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and yes, skin the fookers. It isn't that hard.
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Or explode the skins by holding over a gas flame, one of the many many reasons to have a gas cooker and one of the small pleasures of life
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Mutts - Nature Notebooks was a compliment and I realised it was all your own work really.
These will be appropriately-soiled (heh) and half under glass, half not just for compare and contrast purposes.
strutts - hope you don't lose your cherry this year.
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I am not familiar with Nature Notebook
So do you have your own volcano? That is exceptionally attentive to detail. Bravo.
I think you will find the glass ones have greater depth of colour and softness of texture, sweetness, but and the skins will be thinner. But that makes them split easier if you are an irregular waterer and also you will find that they get more whitefly probs. They don't like it steamy either, so mildew really gets to the plantstock indoors. Outdoors, if you get a summer like last year, game on. If not, acidic yellowy yuk.
I have only outdoors this year. heritage beefsteak (which though unfashionable have an unbeatable aroma and texture for tomato salad and are not all wet and acidic plus they love growing outdoors), and San Ms too.
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fooking hell Mutto.
Buy a nice bottle of wine on the way home, rinse your salty balls in some cheap prosecco and (concensually) plough Mrs Mutts into next week.
Sack off this gardening bollocks
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My Worcester Pearmain is about to blossom. The Cox nowhere near. But it is very early.
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No Bam. My garden, woodland, field shit is absolutely the business. I love to work outside.
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Plough her outside whilst surveying your woodland.
Maybe throw in a few Tarzan yodels
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That reminds me of the tarzan joke
One day Jane found Tarzan in the jungle. He was lean and muscular and she was very attracted to him. During the course of their conversation, she asked what he did for sex.
"Sex?" he asked. "What's that?"
She explained what sex was and he said, "Oh, Tarzan use a hole in the trunk of tree!"
Horrified, Jane said, "Oh, Tarzan you have it all wrong! I'll show you how to do it properly." She took off her dress, dropped to the ground and spread her legs wide.
"Here," she said, "You must put it in here."
Tarzan removed his loincloth, stepped closer, and gave her a powerful kick in the crotch with his foot. Jane rolled around in agony. Eventually she managed to gasp, "What the hell did you do that for?"
"Tarzan check for bees first!"
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did you manage to get rid of the rats and how is the solo bunny doing?
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Yes, let's move on
Rat gone. bulldozed over the space and have laid new turf.
Solo bunny is well and happy in a new palace (a cool indestructible chicken coop) inside the perimeter fence that surrounds the pond, so he is on grass with a sea view and duck neighbours. Very content, but has not had the company of another for a month, so a trifle bored.
A real live forrin rabbit made the mistake of strolling out on our lawn yesterday. The cat came from one direction and while bunny was staring that down, and cat was sidling forwards as they do, doggums let loose the paws of war and galloped down the runway and snatched it and then did that thing the orcas do with seals. There was lots of tossing it up in the air, letting it go, then when it thought it had made it, charging by and snatching it up again. Then she ate it.
For a moment I was worried the loner boner had got out but he's fine. Now doggums has the taste of wabbit on her tongue and the fence looks like a sound decision.
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he lives solo in one of these now
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ooh that's flash. Clearly needs a friend though
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that fookr came in a flat pack too. imagine the pleasure.
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when he's gone I'm putting bantams in there.
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Rabbits are such totally pointless pets
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I like rabbits but yes that beauty deserves some chicken inhabitants
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It is for chickens. It has two brood boxes at the back and a slider to close it and make it fox proof at night. But the rab is fine with it. He is, as Wang says, pointless. He is so relaxed about his new arrangements, though, that he lies on the ground floor splayed out enjoying the sun. This is not a stressed rabbit.
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