Gardening

[Kirbstone]

They're forecasting a bit of a blow here tomorrow, which will probably dispatch most of the remaining leaves. This morning late-ish I was chilling out down at the boathouse when our little friend the kingfisher paid a visit, perched on the horizontal bar between the ramps briefly, then flew low across to the left and was gone.

Kingfisher !.jpg

Although small, they are probably our most beautiful bird. Alas I don't possess the equipment or the patience to take such a picture as that attached. It's log sawing time here. We now have sufficient young timber to thin it out and log it for burning. Younger son did the chain-saw bit and Muggins here is exercising using a simple unpowered bow saw to produce logs for the open fires. We're still discovering undug potatoes which escaped the wet and there's still the odd unpicked apple clinging on here and there.

November stillness on lake..jpg

There's not much colour left now, just a few red leaves still on the solitary Canadian maple over there in the direction of the house. Ten years ago this view had no trees or buildings in it at all, just a wet reed-filled field.

T.

[Sarongman]

That Kingfisher was a remarkable shot! What sort of a camera did you use? Certainly not my grandfather's full plate Thornton Pickard with shutter speed up to a blistering quarter of a second

[Kirbstone]

Sorry Sarongman, but I filched that pic. from Flickr interesting photos site. I tried to get it back, used 'kingfisher' search, found a raft of similar pics, but none described camera or exposure &c.

T.

[Kirbstone]

The creatures doing our gardening this time of year are the hens, which my MM has allowed roam about pecking where they will. Recently we discussed feeding X-amount of birds through the Winter with zero eggs appearing each day, whereupon my MM said: 'Why not install a light in the main henhouse, extending their 'day' and maybe they'll restart laying'. That done and sure enough the eggs re-appeared. Now we're getting 8 to 10 per day and literally swimming in them!

Henhouse lit Rs.JPG

T.

[Sinned]

I was at the till recently when a guy bought some of those little plastic windmills that you buy at the beach for the kiddiewinkles. I looked at him quizzickly - I must have done because he offered up the following explanation. He is plagued by moles and had tried the usual smoke bombs and dind't like to use poison when he had been told that these windmills were effective planted neat the entrances to the holes. I said that I hadn't heard about that but would keep it in mind if anyone else had the same problem and that I would know if it worked if he turned up for more. Sure enough a couple of weeks later he was back for more and siad that they worked a treat. So I don't know if any of you have this problem and if so might be worth a try.

[Kirbstone]

Sinned,

Having wrestled with moles under our lawns in England for nigh-on a quarter of a century I am more than happy to report that there are NO moles in Ireland at all at all! Together with newts & snakes & lots of other creatures they didn't make it over here after the Ice Age to annoy us. Y'see the Oirish trough is deeper than the 'Channel' and it filled first, cutting us off from migrating animals repopulating the North of Europe including Britain when the ice melted & the sea level rose.

I remember it well.....

T.

[Kirbstone]

As the one who causes all plant life to shrivel and die when I so much as dare to touch them I have been long since demoted by my MM. Head Gardener to just maintaining the inanimate 'structures' in our garden. To reduce the terminal velocity of our Irish destructive winds across said enclosure I have indeed erected a great many barriers which are almost invariably of wood and must be maintained.

Dovecote in Spring Rs.jpg

Not a little distressing of late has been the discovery on cleaning out invading hooded crows' nests from our standing dovecot was the state of the horizontals between floors. We erected this structure only in 2007 and barely 6 years later the 'Waterproof Board' ply of the periphery has seriously delaminated, no doubt due to water stagnation, as the verticals &c are all fine.

Dovecote in snow Dec. 10 Rs.jpg

I need to find a sheet of half-inch BS1088 Marine Ply and cut replacement floor edges to be affixed to said floors after the rotten stuff has been cut away, and painted up nicely &c. More than an afternoon's job there.....!

Dovecote Close-up Rs.jpg

Tom K.

[Sinned]

We have let our back garden become more natural in order to attract more birds. We have had a nest box which has been unused for the past couple of years so we changed its position to a more sheltered spot and I'm glad to say that we have a couple of blue tits nesting in there now. It's lovely to watch them on the feeders and pop in and out of their little hole in the next box. Needless to say the gardening has become a bit more minimal just at the moment.

[skirtyscot]

"let our garden become a bit more natural" - for me, that would be a euphemism for "we have been too lazy to mow or weed"!

[Kirbstone]

It's obvious that our local Council (& presumably other councils) make use of Google Maps to get info. on what's going on inside properties without themselves coming round to look. Recently we had occasion to have our grounds redrawn officially for inheritance/will purposes and the engineer referred to the maps the local Council had of our site.
A little lake we had dug 12 years ago (and because of tree growth is totally invisible from the road) is accurately marked on their official map as a nature conservation area !! This is part of our garden and we only mow the paths through it and cull the unwanted tree growth. More natural you can hardly arrange, but that whole area is fun-paradise for the grandchildren and their friends when they visit

November stillness on lake..jpg

Rs Denim Boat 2.jpg

For those who like weeding &c we've a LOT of formal gardens which require an army to maintain and MM & I just struggle with. Monty Don & Allan Titchmarsh et Al waffle on about fabulous garden designs &c. but totally fail to mention the Panzer Division necessary to maintain them.

T.

[skirtyscot]

So Tom, how many of the 26 counties do you own?

[crfriend]

So Tom, how many of the 26 counties do you own?

I am more than slightly envious of Tom's surroundings, although I don't have the means to fund a proper panzer division to look after the formal gardens.

That said, anybody who is reasonably good at aerial-photograph interpretation should be able to find his plot on Google Maps based on ground-level shots. (I scared the poor chap by putting a stick-pin in his southerly hidey-hole based solely on photos he'd taken at ground-level and then doing some simple triangulation. Sorry for that, Tom!) Be warned that the aerial imagery on Google is not necessarily up to date; the dovecot does not appear because it's newer than the photographs from on high. Note that I will not divulge the ICBM address for either place; that just wouldn't be fair.

On the topic of gardening, it's getting close to where my services will be required here to support Sapphire's garden. That'll be a nice respite from the Hell that work has become.

[Kirbstone]

SkS,
Lor', reading my previous post it looks as if I'm the Laird of vast square miles of moorland here. Nothing could be further from the truth, but in 2,000 I had a rural boggy field knocked down to me at auction which in the intervening 13 years we have transmogrified into 'Castle Kirby', planting thousands of mixed woodland and digging the aforesaid lake(s) ....there are three, now!
One rower friend dubbed it the 'Lakelands of Kirbyshire', while another friend of MM's called it 'A little bit of Old England'. Both complimentary, but there are just a few hectares around the house and neighbours are out of earshot/sight.
Other than that a patch in the town of Naas which has our Professional Premises on it and I share that with my Colleague/partner. Lastly a handkerchief with sheds on it around a 200-yr. -old small farmhouse with a view by the Sea in Co. Kerry, which costs Eur 100 worth of petrol nowadays just to go down there to cut the grass, which grows there on 388 days a year!!

Carl,
I'm sorry to hear that your work has become so tedious. I suppose I'm very fortunate to be still able to do mini-engineering on the mouths of nice people still daily in my 70s. Long may it last....It has got to, as I owe too much money to too many people, just now and our cash-strapped government is inventing new taxes weekly to satisfy the Burghers in Berlin/Brussels.
Gardening is very therapeutic, y'know....akin to (for me) rowing, DIY. and music.

BTW., our ICBM is hidden in a vertical silo under the round fountain-pond in the lawn! If we ever fire it, it's programmed to hit Pyong Yen.

T.

[skirtyscot]

"We will sing that old Te Deum
When we see that ICBM"

Tom Lehrer, don't you love him?

[crfriend]

Tom Lehrer, don't you love him?

Yes -- and I have for well over 40 years. (My family made sure I was properly corrupted as a young-un.) As well as the perversions of PDQ Bach sprinkled in for good measure.