Thursday 20 March 2008

Easter Nests



Tree House to Let

During nest box week, which started on 14th February, I installed two nest boxes in my garden. This one not far from the kitchen where I can watch it and another at the far end of the garden. Yesterday, for the first time, I saw a great tit looking into this one. Hope he liked it and comes back. I will keep you posted.


Tuesday 18 March 2008

Spring flowers



















Pond pics for Jennifer

Difficult to photograph tadpoles without fishing them out of the pond but think you can see them here. The lighter bits are the jelly and the black is the recently hatched tadpoles.

Two views of the pond




First the bad news

About three quarters of the frogspawn in my garden pond died due to the pond freezing over shortly after spawning.

The good news is that the remaining portion has hatched and has lots of extra jelly to consume now. Maybe that will give them a better chance of surviving and becoming frogs.

Another piece of good news is that my pond is now the residence of a little newt too. I spotted it swimming around yesterday.

Friday 7 March 2008

Jonquils

I have recently learned that Jonquil is another name for daffodil. You learn something new every day. Don't think it would have sounded quite the same in Wordsworth's poem.


Here are the different jonquils in my garden.

This large one is all yellow.


This small one has 2 flowers on one stalk. Often has more.

This is a double one with lots of petals and no obvious trumpet.

This one is very pale with darker short trumpet

This one has a darker almost orange trumpet.


Saturday 1 March 2008

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus!

Today is St David's Day. St David is the patron saint of Wales. Stuart was dressed in his Welsh sweater and wearing a leek. The leek and daffodil are both national emblems and Stuart tells me that boys wear leeks and girls wear daffodils!

We made welsh cakes today.