Jul 18th, 2014

Author: donich_admin

Midsummer Flowers

The garden isn’t quite as colourful now as it was back in May/June. In particular it is missing the wow factor of the primulas which were out in force for more than three months but are past now.

We still have some nice ones in July though – the hydrangeas are looking lovely, as is the buddleia. I’d always thought of the latter as very good for wildlife – though apparently it is less good than I had thought as under some circumstances it can actually be detrimental to butterflies by out-competing native plants which provide food for butterflies in their larval stages (R got this from BBC – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28196221). Anyway – it smells lovely and the bees are all over it. We certainly are not short of bees here which is good.The water lilies are still magnificent as well – even though I say so myself I’ve never seen such fantastic ones in a private garden before.

Today’s pictures also seem to incorporate Schrodi who took a bit of time off hunting to meet us at the gates when we came back from our walk. He is an absolute devil for mice and voles at the moment – on average he is bringing in at least two a day. Yesterday I picked a jumper up off the floor and discovered an (unhurt) baby vole underneath it. I picked it up in both hands to rescue it and then discovered that I had shut the door behind me and couldn’t open it again without releasing the vole. While I was yelling for R – who was quietly oblivious listening to music in his office – the vole was desperately trying to escape by repeatedly biting my fingers – luckily it was too small and young to make much impact. When I finally got R to open the door I released the vole in the garden and it shot off at a rate of knots – hopefully the wiser from its near-death experience. And the same afternoon Tora got in on the act by bringing in a large (dead) field mouse….