Celandines and peacocks

I look on the sea of golden stars that covers parts of our garden with mixed feelings. The stars are lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria), a plant that is a beautiful thug.

 

Beautiful but smothering blanket of celandine.

The flowers are very attractive to early butterflies. Yesterday I saw two peacock butterflies feasting on the little yellow stars.


Peacock butterfly on a rather limp daffodil.

The problem with wild celandine is that it spreads like crazy and smothers other small plants such as wood anemone that emerge at the same time of year. The RHS page on Celandine suggests some methods of control. We hand weed them in selected areas but you have to be very careful to remove the bunches of tubers intact. Otherwise you are just spreading them around. Another trick is to make sure that they are sharing space with bigger plants such as hellebores that can stand up for themselves.

There are some cultivated varieties that are a bit better behaved. We have some of the bronze leaved Brazen Hussy. This variety has bronzed, almost black leaves. Although it doesn't spread anywhere near as quickly as its green cousin, you still need to keep an eye on it. The butterflies seem to like it well enough.

Brazen hussy.

There are other varieties too. We quite often find doubles that have spontaneously developed from the singles in our grass. Celandine is a pretty but troublesome plant. Don't let the wild one into your garden if you can possibly avoid it but if you are stuck with it, enjoy the show.

Lambs

Just over a month ago, it all started kicking off in the garden. Now spring seems to be full swing.  The gardens are blazing with daffodils, primroses and all sorts of other spring flowers.  Blackthorn is out and pink blossom is everywhere.
 

Watercolour of spring flowers.

A fox or two has visited most nights and we have had another visit from the badger. We have had all sorts of butterflies including peacock, small tortoiseshell, yellow brimstone, comma and red admirals.

Best of all, while driving round the Uckfield bypass this morning, I saw lambs. Spring really is here.

Sketch of ewe and lambs.

It's all kicking off!

One week into February and suddenly everything is kicking off in the garden.

First, the frogs. On the 8th, I casually looked in the pond and noticed spawn. It might have been there for a couple of days. I have been noting the date that the frogs spawn since 2005. This year's spawning date is a month earlier than in the cold weather last year. In fact it is earlier than any of the years since I started recording.

As for animals recorded by my Bushnell trail camera, the wet weather has continued but animals have started visting again. We have had some fox visits and our first badger of the year.

Fox - quarter to nine on the 2nd of February.

Badger - just after midnight on the same night.

Lime Aid - Sunshine and Slime Moulds

We had another work day at Lime Tree Avenue. This is the second of three work days. I made some notes on the first in Lime Aid - A great stressbuster. The next will be on Saturday the 8th of March, starting at 9am. After last month's unrelenting rain it was soggy underfoot but sunny for a while.  

The photos below show the first of two trees that I trimmed and tidied. 

Lime tree - before and after.

While I was shifting fallen twigs to the back of the strip where the trees grow, I found a twig with white Jelly-like blobs. The leader of the group, Martyn Stenning explained that this was likely to be a slime mould.

Slime mould on a fallen twig.

I don't know which species it is but it is similar to the false puffball. 

While I was working round this tree, a gentleman told me that vehicles used to be able to drive along the avenue.  I asked a question about this in the Facebook group: Memories of Uckfield. Thank you to Donna, Sandra, Jo, Sally, Claire and Joanne, who contributed memories about Lime Tree Avenue. Between them, they:

• originally led up to Uckfield House
• explained that you could drive from Hempstead Lane up to the front entrance of the school, which was where the leisure centre is now
• added some lovely details on subjects ranging from pilgrims to cross-country runs.

When doing my second tree, I found myself wading through a sea of young alexanders plants, already knee high. Last year's stems show that the adult plants will be a bit taller than me.

Alexanders.

I wasn't quite finished when I heard the rattle of hail stones. Happily, I was protected by the big old tree and they couldn't sting me. However the wind was getting stronger and gustier so we stopped.  

Primroses.

One last treat was the slight of primroses as I left the avenue to do a little shopping down the town.

Garden visitors - January 2014

We have just had one of the wettest Januarys on record. We have also had very few fox visits captured on our Bushnell trail camera compared to the colder, drier January last year.

One of the few fox visits captured in January 2014.

I have got no idea if the wet weather is the cause. Maybe, in the mild weather, they can find all the food they need closer to home. Maybe they are as enthusiastic as I am about being on a North facing slope in driving, cold rain.  The figures are:

Month	Nights camera recording	Fox visits recorded	Fox visits per night
Jan 2013	6	8	1.33
Jan 2014	12	3	0.25

Last year we also recorded one badger visit on a cold, frosty night.  So that's it. A bit of wet weather and the little turncoats disappear.

Big Garden Birdwatch - 2014

It's that time of year again. Time to do the RSPB's big garden birdwatch. Otherwise known as big migrations of birds to somewhere that is not my garden. The idea is to count the birds that land in the garden during a one hour period.

It was very damp and misty and, at first, I thought I wasn't going to get anything at all. I had heard some bird song when I left the house to fetch the paper but no sign of any birds landing in the garden.

While I was doing my birdwatch, I was amused by the starlings that perched just outside the garden. I wasn't so happy about the magpies that frightened the little birds off.

So here are my numbers for this and a few previous birdwatches.  This year, during a spell of record breaking wet weather, we had fewer species than previously but we had greater numbers of individuals thanks to our starlings boucing back from last year's poor showing.

	2011 Saturday, 29 Jan	2012 Sunday, 29 Jan	2013 Saturday, 26 Jan	2014 Saturday, 25 Jan
Start time	8.45 am	8.45 am	9.07am	8.50 am
Weather	dull, icy		cold, bright	damp, misty
House Sparrow	3	4
Blue tit	3	3	2	3
Starling	8	9	2	8
Blackbird	2	2	3	3
Woodpigeon	1		1	2
Great tit		1
Chaffinch	2
Robin	1	1	1	2
Collared Dove	2	1	1
Magpie	2	2	2	2
Pied Wagtail	1	1	1
Song Thrush	2		1
Dunnock	3	1
Coal Tit		1
Goldfinch			1
No of species	12	11	10	6
No of individuals	30	26	15	20

If you are reading this on the weekend I wrote it, you can still fit your hour in. Just spend an hour noting the birds that land in your garden or other patch of ground and submit your results using the RSPB website.

Lime Aid - A Great Stressbuster

You might think that, after a hard week at the keyboard, I wouldn't be rushing out to do more work on a Saturday morning. You would be wrong. It is a great stress buster and very satisfying.

Today is the first of a sequence of work mornings run by Lime Aid.  If you are interested in coming along we are doing another two on the 8th of February and the 8th of March.  This time about eight of us turned up and managed to trim away the growth from the bases of loads of trees.

My first tree - before and after.

After the relentless rain of the last couple of weeks the morning's sun was a delight. It was noticeable how advanced the leaves of all the wild flowers were. I wasn't really looking very hard but saw foliage of Cow parsley, angelica, wild arum and primroses. 

My third tree - before and after.

It was also lovely to hear the birds chattering and twittering. I saw a few blue tits perched on the hedge between the avenue and the school.  I believe the ones I heard were blackbirds and robins but I didn't see any this time.

Last year I found a geocache. This year there was nothing so exciting but plenty of litter including, would you believe, discarded nappies.