Empty nest

This is the image from the Aberfoyle Osprey nest. There's something badly wrong with this picture, and it's the fact that there is no bird sitting there. The first chick was due to hatch by now, and we should be seeing an attentive mother bird protecting a tiny chick from the elements and a proud dad coming in with fish.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the female seems to have abandoned the nest, and there is no clue as to why. There have been intruders, but not to the extent that it would cause her to leave the nest. She'd been taking leaves of absence which had made everyone watching nervous, but now seems to have left it completely. Due to the chilly weather and wind, it's almost certain that the un-hatched chicks will have died.

It's very, very sad. This is the third year running that this nest has failed, with different birds.

From a visual point of view, the staff at Aberfoyle will set up a camera at a back-up nest which will hopefully have chicks hatching out for people to see, but it is a mystery as to why this particular nest has suffered three consecutive years of failure. It's also perhaps a reminder that nature is pretty damned cruel, and how precarious the lives and success of the osprey in Scotland is.

Thrawn

We had "scunnered" last entry, now let me introduce you to another fine Scots word: "thrawn".

Stubborn and willful.

Something I think can be applied to all gardeners. After setbacks you have to sulk and ruminate for a wee bit and then, set the jaw, pick up your trowel and start again. Apparently I have a real jaw-set which my nearest and dearest know means "don't argue, she's made her mind up and you'd be better keeping out of her way!"

I think Nature is the same though. She just does what she has to do, and despite the weather and the storms, it's heartening to see the apple trees forming tiny apples. I think these are lovely, little tangible symbols of hope, these hop-sized fruits.

D spent this morning putting together a new growhouse for me, wood and polycarbonate and hopefully more sturdy than the polythene one.

(I took the remains of the other one to the recycling centre where there were two other scunnered individuals dumping the mangled remains of their greenhouses - we exchanged rueful eye-rolling as we tipped the metal into the scrap metal skip). The rectangular planter I had the tomato plants in was just too small, so I transplanted them into individual large pots and put them in the new growhouse - with temperatures just 10 degrees I figure they'll appreciate the protection. There wasn't much root that came with them though - that's a bit worrying... I tell you, these tomatoes, if they appear, will be the most expensive ones ever - remind me why I don't just simply say "sod-it" and head to the supermarket??

Or, indeed, to our local farm shop? Our lovely garden centre, Hopetoun, has today opened a farm shop. And it is lovely. Unusual condiments (lots of variations on balsamic dressings - and samples to try); seafood and smoked fish from St Monans in Fife; a fantastic bakery and deli, with things like venison chorizo, air-dried venison ham, pheasant balmoral (haggis wrapped in pheasant), artisan breads, free-range chicken and ham pies, locally made cheeses; a selection of not-normally available to buy cookbooks, locally made sweets, artisan dairy products and a butchery where the produce is farmed in the fields around the shop, and everything is labelled "Estate". There are jointed chickens and whole ones, all free range, all from just a mile away from the shop.

We bought a load of stuff, amongst which was some smoked salmon trimmings, and when we got home, I rustled up a couple of quiches with the glut of eggs we currently have, with smoked salmon, the last of the garden's purple sprouting broccoli and asparagus. And they are heavenly. I've put them in the freezer and they'll do lunches for a week or a trip to see friends in Fife where it's a communal buffet.

Chelsea Flower Show

First of all, hi to Susan Allan who follows this blog for her encouragement following yesterday's fed-upedness :-)

I spent a wee while this afternoon tidying up the pots and dismantling the greenhouse frame so the garden looks a bit better. Still can't find the seedlings though, or any sign of the pots and trays they were in. How can it be that the empty plastic pots are still here and the heavy soil filled ones have vanished??

I've decided to get a big plastic tub, the lidded kind you use for storing kids' toys, to keep the pots in.  And I'll recycle the pots I really am not going to use by giving them to Hopetoun Garden Centre.  Looking on the positive side, the new greenhouse arrangement will give me a little bit more room on the patio so I can put the sun loungers out now and also the gazebo out to shade us from the blistering sun... *cough*

But, if it's cold and blowy here, it's sunny and warm (if a bit blowy) in Chelsea where I tune in to get my annual garden-fashion show fix. I've never been, but I gather that watching on TV is the best idea, particularly with the interactive options available and the Internet. Going in person is apparently a bit of an endurance test as it's usually so warm and so busy. Watching from the comfort of my sofa means I avoid the crowds and the aching feet. Plus of course it gives you the chance to see the gardens uninterrupted.  So yes, Chelsea Flower Show on the telly, a glass of wine in my hand, and I'm in heaven.

I admit to being a bit of a boring gardener, inasmuch as I prefer classic/traditional gardens, and colour. I'm not big on the fashion of a few years ago where everything was green, green, and variations on green. Similarly, things like Diarmuid Gavin's lollipops for the National Lottery, his "sky garden" for Cork Tourist Board etc, just don't do it for me. I can appreciate the concept, and the thinking behind it, but for me a garden is about the plants: the structures should be the framing, the support, the punctuation, but not the point of the garden.

But I love seeing what the new plants are in the Pavilion, and the combinations used in the big gardens.

This year, as always there are gardens I just love and which I covet. 

I love this one, because I love the rill that winds exactly the same way water does on damp sand on its way to the ocean.

The Laurent Perrier (always a gorgeous garden)have a planting plan I just love with the faded crimson irises - I would have an iris bed if I could

Absolutely stunning combinations


And I love this because, it combines fruit, veg and flowers, the perfect cottage garden

When I think of cottage gardens I think of  a Mellors-esque garden where everything is stuffed together and the veg is as ornamental as the flowers. A modern and middle-class conceit I suppose, because we, or I, don't have the same worries about the success or otherwise of my crops.  I do at some point want a fair bit more land, but at the same time, having a tiny amount (with the allotment) forces me to garden like I would like to/should live: to cram everything worthwhile and enjoyable in...

Scunnered

Scunnered, if you haven't heard the phrase, is a Scots word meaning: "fed up, annoyed, hacked off"

And the reason for that is that yesterday the country was hammered by winds up to 100mph and the destruction is just... Depressing...

Loss of life was minimal, and that's the main thing, and my heart goes out to the good people of Missouri who have been so badly affected by tornados :-(

Yesterday on the way home a lorry overturned in front of me on the motorway, causing major delays which were compounded as the storm blew trees over and closed main arterial road, rail, and air routes in the country.

A lucky break (in the guise of a heavily pregnant woman driving the car behind me on the motorway which persuaded the police to get her, and consequently me, out and on our way) allowed me to get home many hours before the poor people stuck on the road behind us. When I opened the gate though I was met, rather violently, by the greenhouse, which had torn off its chains tying it to the fence, and lifted it bodily away from the bags of earth weighing it down. The polythene cover and light frame effectively acted as a sail, and before I cut off the cover, I was borne aloft a few times and battered around the garden by the greenhouse. All the plastic pots were flying like confetti around the garden and the car park, and worst of all, the seedlings I'd been nurturing were flung out and ruined.

I still haven't found them.

I managed to locate a flat tray I'd left some aster seedlings as a stand-by, and miraculously about 4 of them are all right. I found two courgette seedlings in the hedge, so they're now back in intensive care in the house. The pea seedlings are just - well, they could be in Norway for all I know. The tomatoes are now exposed to the elements (and they are not happy). My poor, beautiful delphiniums are snapped, and my acer, oh, the poor dear, lost a branch, her second in the space of 6 months :-(

All the pots are now in the house, the greenhouse cover is in the cloakroom, the seed trays in the hall.

The hens though, are fine. Traumatised and outraged at the missiles that flew their way, but they're okay. And that is obviously the main concern when dealing with garden damage.

It's all just so... demoralising. All that work and hope just obliterated in a few hours. I've said earlier that it's a mistake I do make is seeing where my plants *should* be instead of where they are realistically going to be based on where I live. It might be pea harvesting season in the south of England but up here, they're inch high seedlings and unlikely to crop for another couple of months yet.

But stuff like this storm and the continuing windy and cold spell does highlight the brevity of the growing season here and concentrate the mind as to what can be grown.

On the plus side, we nipped to the Allotment and the shed is still standing, and all our little fleece/mesh tunnels, so that's something.

We are going to abandon the greenhouse - not the concept, but the polythene one. This is the third year running that we have had seedlings destroyed, so I am now looking at something like a tall cold frame, which is wood and plastic, and hopefully more weighty and sturdy. I really just want something to harden seedlings out and to grow tomatoes in, so it should be okay, but I will have to either rationalise my plastic pot collection or... No, rationalisation it will have to be.

Oh well, them's the breaks I suppose when you garden, no matter where in the world you happen to be. It's successes and setbacks and the thing is to remember the successes and allow them to outweigh the setbacks.

In other words, take a deep breath, onwards. and upwards.

Spring is busting out all over...

(Me with a 5 week old osprey chick)


Very exciting news this morning with the news that the first chick had hatched on EJ and Odin's nest at Loch Garten. This morning I had a look at the webcam and EJ stood up very gingerly to reveal the teeniest, wobbliest wee chick which waggled its head and then collapsed again before EJ manoevred herself with great delicacy back over it to provide it and the other two eggs shelter. It always amazes me, having seen and held ospreys, the size of those talons, how they manage to manoevre their way over these tiny little chicks without stabbing them. It does happen, but it's very rare.

The oldest breeding female osprey, Lady, at Loch of the Lowes, is due to hatch out her 49th, 50th, and 51st chicks over the course of the next few days, and the birds at Aberfoyle aren't that far behind.

So it's all go, and, as as one Loch Garten blogger put it: the rollercoaster ride begins. It's a long 7 weeks until the chicks fledge and in that time, with the Scottish weather, anything can happen. Keep your fingers, toes, legs, eyes, and anything else you can, crossed for a half-decent summer and good fishing!
On Sunday I'm heading to Aberfoyle to do a stint. I'm looking forward to it, though I've found it really hard going this week with work, and am at work again on Monday, so I'm planning a few very, very, early nights next week to help me manage. I'm quite taken aback at how exhausted I'm finding being at work, but then, as well as being at work, I'm doing all the house-work too, so it shouldn't be that surprising. Just need to take it one week at a time I think...

From eyries to earth now - I visited the Allotment yesterday for the first time since the weekend, expecting to see a burst of weeds, but also a burst of growth after the heavy rain of the last few days. I wasn't disappointed on the weed front, the grass has been putting out runners and forming clumps and mats around established veg, and there are rogue potato plants popping up beside new seedlings. Wonderfully though, there are now pea and beetroot seedlings. I had bought some young beetroot plants at the weekend, but a glut of beetroot is never a bad thing in this house as D pickles them, so they have gone in beside the new seedlings.

What amazed me though was the state of the soil: I had expected the rain to have transformed the dry cracked earth into crumbly, workable loveliness, but it seems instead to have activated the clay in the soil which has now hardened. The top layer of the soil is just dust which swirled around in the wind. So trying to yank out weeds meant that the top of it snapped off but the root remained in situ. Maybe it's not rained enough - what a dreadful thought!!
My poor kale seedlings are under attack though, from *something*. Most likely caterpillars as the cabbage white butterflies have been rampant. So I've salvaged D's empty 2L fizzy drink bottles and cut the bottoms off, and have plonked these over the remaining kale seedlings to hopefully prevent further attack. And I gave the last rites to the courgette plants which didn't, after all, survive the frost, so have more seedlings on the go in the house. One of which has an Elastoplast on it after I cleverly managed to snap one of the stems, and I'm living in hope that it wasn't snapped right off and can mend itself!

The weather here has been awful though - we've had gales all week and temperatures barely into double figures, but in reality pegged back by the wind to much colder than that. I'm worried that my greenhouse isn't generating enough heat to keep the tomatoes going, and I resorted to putting a clear polythene bag over the butternut squash plant in the garden. Though I'm thinking that what would be really useful, is a huge clear plastic bottle I can butcher and turn into a cloche/greenhouse thing. Something like offices use on their water-coolers. If you know of anywhere I can get my hands on one, do let me know!
 

Blog award fabulousness

This was awarded to me by the fabulous Caroline at the Numinous Wilds

These are the blogs and bloggers I choose to pay the award forward to:

Freebird's Flight of Fancy
The SmallestSmallholding




And my 7 bits of randomness:

I like tomato ketchup but not tomatoes
I once dislocated my knee doing the Timewarp (it was the jump to the left)
Family lore has it that an ancestor of mine was Lord Mayor of London back in the early Mediaeval ages.
I taught myself to play the piano but can't read music.
I got married up a mountain in Colorado wearing jeans and a T-Shirt
Cats, even strange ones, love me
I was the youngest person at Uni when I first started, having started school at 4.

Answers on a postcard

One our feathered little darlings must have managed to squeeze out under a gap in the chicken wire today.

I was confused though because there was no evidence of an ecstatic, manically digging hen in the veg beds, indeed, all three hens were in their run looking as though butter wouldn't melt.

But the evidence was all to clear, veg beds which were dug over, dug out and dug up. The salad bed with only a few sparse seedlings to show yet: dug so thoroughly I couldn't have done a better job myself - if I'd wanted to...

Clearly she'd got out (my money's on it having been Grizel) and for whatever reason, her teeny brain had told her to get back in to her run again.

What's stumped me is why she totally avoided eating the sprouting broccoli, or the spring greens that we grow specifically for them. Bizarre.

Anyway, the thing is that now I have a salad bed with no salad stuff, an asparagus bed with no asparagus (they were bare root plants which have not taken anyway), and a butternut squash plant which has taken a bit of a battering...

In at the office today to work for the first time in months. It was all meetings and just me trying to catch up on what everyone's been doing. Good gods, but it was exhausting though! Could feel myself really struggling at points and getting quite dizzy... Thankfully I'm working from home tomorrow so a bit less intense.

And if there are any sunny spells I can have a go at repairing the gap in the hen run and seeing what I can salvage/ replant...

Back to work

Today was my first day back at work again after a whopping 15 weeks' sick leave. I guess that isn't that much when compared to other people who have been far sicker than I was. Any rate, today was me doing a phased return, so 4 hours working from home. The time was spent just trying to wade through the emails. I'm surprised by how tiring I found it. I had just blithely assumed that because I was managing round the house and allotment, I would find sitting in front of the PC a doddle. Unfortunately it seems to require a lot more concentration and by the end of the four hours my concentration was waning and I was really tired, more than I'd been in a while.

Tomorrow sees me in the office for four hours, most of which will be spent in catch-up meetings. I hope I can take it all in!

In gardening news, I was amazed and delighted to see flowers on my tomato plants in the greenhouse. Poor things were a wee bit pot-bound since the salad leaves planted as an interim measure in the planters weren't quite ready to be pulled out and the tomatoes planted. However, since I have planted salad stuff outside (though the Gods alone know when they'll actually germinate), the priority in the greenhouse is the tomato plants so I pulled out some of the young plants (and used them in a salad) and stuck the tomatoes in the planters. Fingers crossed there will be some fruits!

Is it just me or is everything really slow to germinate this year? Carrots, peas and beetroot seedlings are taking forever to germinate. I don't know if it's the warm weather which dried out the ground, and I'm hoping that this current wet weather will trigger some action, though it's now turned a lot cooler and very windy... Can't have it all ways I suppose, though warm rain might be nice!

I've a notion to paint our allotment shed. I took a wander round the allotments the other day and there were a few which were brightly painted blue and red. I'm assuming that they sought permission though, checking the rules, there's nothing about regulating paint colour, only that the shed should be maintained. Anyway, I had a look at a coloured varnish selection in Homebase, and I'm really taken with a lovely damson shade. I think I'll nip in to the garden centre and check that it's okay to paint it, and that will be a weekend task. When it stops raining of course...

Neighbours

I spent some time today at the Allotment (between walking my parents' dog every few hours, ferrying hubby to the train station, feeding and cleaning cats and hens) cutting out the limp and blackened foliage which was frost-damaged. There are, thankfully, healthy green shoots coming through on the potatoes, but I fear the courgettes may be terminal...

Our allotment neighbour on the other side made a rare appearance today. Poor couple, they're busy with home and garden commitments and haven't really got the time to deal with preparing an allotment for planting. I'd had my suspicions about the yellowing colour of their weeds and they said to me today that they had been spraying weedkiller on their plot as they hadn't time to really weed :-( I admit I'm disappointed - they did this last year and I can't help but think that if they're so pushed for time they have to resort to weedkiller... I'm also concerned that some of the weedkiller might contaminate my plot. I don't put chemicals on my plot, or garden for that matter, and though it's time consuming and back-breaking work, all weeding is done by hand. I like being able to reassure people to whom I give veg/ fruit to that there are no artificial chemicals used and it's as organic as I can manage (though it wouldn't meet, say, the Soil Association criteria because it's on previously used farmland - and of course because our allotment neighbour uses weedkiller...)

I've told you about the shed at our Allotment haven't I? Because our neighbour across the path had decided not to put up a shed, ours stood exposed to the full fury of the North and Westerly gales, and given that 60mph winds are fairly routine, even in summer, with gusts to 70mph and beyond also being fairly frequent, our poor shed took a fair battering. Once we were able to go back in February to see the damage the Cailleach had caused, we saw that the shed had been blown backwards, and off its plinth. Consequently it had a rather jaunty listing to one side, and there was a knack to opening the door: standing at one side of the shed and pushing it so it (temporarily) righted itself and the door could be hauled open.

When I was engaged in the act of shoving the shed, John, one of our allotment neighbours on one side, stood with mouth agape at the palaver. He came over to investigate and see if there was anything he and his trusty electric hammer drill/screwdriver thing could do. When he was sliding planks of wood under the shed to balance it out, another plot-holder we're friendly with, Jack, a retired joiner, came over to see what was going on and before I could demur effectively, they were both tackling the problem of the shed and how to rectify it.

Half an hour later, our shed is elevated up a few inches, but thanks to the judicial positioning of some planks, a "bracing" on one corner, and some other jiggery-pokery, it is now level and stable and the door can be opened and closed easily. The bits of the shed that had come loose because of the warping, have been securely screwed back into place.

Jack, bless him, is going to fashion a wee plinth to act as both a step and to conceal the props under the shed.

How fab is that? It just reminds me how genuinely kind and helpful people are and how there is a real sense of community in the Allotments.

Now, as Jack says, we have a "proper" shed, a proper allotment shed.

Now to think about how I can pimp it :D

Patience

Ask anyone who knows me and they'll confirm that of all my admirable traits (I do have some, honestly), patience is not one of them. I want to know how things will pan out and I want them to pan out NOW. I'm not good with suspense. I'm the person who reads the end of a book just after starting, so I can relax and enjoy the book. With films, I look up the synopsis so I can enjoy the film without any nasty surprises.

Growing things is just the same. I want to be able to tell, NOW, how the plants will turn out, whether I'll get a good crop, what problems I'm going to encounter and which of those problems I can ignore and which to deal with. Some it's a no-brainer - caterpillars and too much rain/ not enough sun. And, really, I should have been able to foretell - or at the least be prepared for - frost. I was lulled into a false sense of security by the lovely weather, forgetting that it can also be accompanied by vicious overnight frosts, and so I was caught out this week when two nights of temps around zero degrees struck. After the first night I hastened to protect the vulnerable little courgette plants and chard with bubble wrap and fleece. Yesterday the temperature increased considerably and brought persistent heavy rain, so I popped back to the plot today to see how the young plants had fared.

Not so great, to be honest. And not just the seedling plants. The courgette plants have no leaves as the frost killed the leaves off, though the chard seems to be not too bad. The potato plants are just a blackened, wilted mass. Tomorrow I have to go and cut the foliage off to allow them to regenerate - hopefully. I've also taken the precaution of planting more courgette seeds in the house in case the ones in the ground are real goners. Would just be good to be able to tell whether they and the tatties will survive. The good thing is that the potatoes are grown for the underground tubers, but I just hope that the foliage being damaged hasn't affected them.

Would be nice to have a crystal ball and be able to tell how they'll turn out!

Sunshine

And yet another gloriously sunny day :-)

If you're reading this from a country that habitually gets good spells of sun, and has a proper "Summer" then I can only urge you to think about everything you've ever read about Scotland's weather - which is all true, by the way - and then imagine how wonderful this warm sunny weather is for us and why I feel the need to talk about it every blog entry!

So today is a Bank Holiday and that meant D was off work too. Since we'd used up nearly all the bird seed in a futile attempt to quieten the hens yesterday (they hooted and buKAWKed for nearly 5 hours as they all wanted in to lay at the same time), we headed up to Dobbies in Stirling to get some more. Interestingly, I've just thought that we could have gone to the one in Livingston but it never crossed our minds... Hmmmm...

So as usual when surrounded by so many plants I lose my head a bit and decided that their offer to buy four perennials for £10 would be very useful and we could pretty up the front garden. Now of course, back at the casa, I realise that there isn't really the room but I'm sure I can squeeze them in somehow!

I also had a brainwave that enabled me to buy some veg plug plants. The carrot seeds are taking *forever* to germinate (it's probably the dry weather) as is the kale. So I bought some plug plants to provide a crop while the seeds grow and mature, thereby providing a continual cropping. Clever, huh?

So this afternoon we adjourned to the Allotment and while D watered (no hosepipes allowed, only watering cans) I got on with planting out the chard and leek seedlings I'd grown. Also sown some fennel and since I've decided that the peas I sowed are duds, some different pea seeds.

Tomorrow marks the first day of my holidays - my sick leave has now officially ended but I had a few days booked for a trip to Belfast that never happened. So I'm on holiday and it feels... remarkably similar to the last few weeks... I feel I should be doing something "holiday-like" but to be honest I think it'll be like every other day. Maybe going back to work will be good to provide a contrast and let me appreciate holidays more!

Thursday I have decided to go to Aberfoyle and the ospreys. The weather's to change, and D's working from home, so I'm relieved of house and allotment duties. As well, it's the Scottish Parliamentary elections, and a day away from the media coverage seems like a very good plan!

It's been disappointing to see the UK Government's plan to remove the burden on local councils to provide allotments if there's a demand. It doesn't affect Scotland, but it does seem short-sighted when the benefits are so great and there is land which is waste land and is fulfilling no other purpose. Let's just hope that sanity prevails...