Cones

Over Christmas Ian and I visited Formby pine woods, Grizedale Forest and Tarn Howes, primarily with the aim of collecting cones so that we could plant the seeds. We managed to find a number of different species. They're currently drying out, but I'm looking forward to extracting and planting the seeds. Not that I'll be going through the entire process undertaken by the Canadian Forest Service, but hopefully some of the seeds will germinate nonetheless.

Assorted pines

Western hemlock
Larch
Sitka spruce
Norway spruce

Douglas fir

A name!

We named the house frog end soon after we moved in, but until now hadn't managed to find a good sign. Ian bought me this for Christmas. Can't wait to go home and put it up.

Hazelnuts

I love the big packs of nuts that you find in supermarkets at this time of year. Hazelnuts, walnuts, brazil nuts... they all look so appealing with their shells still on. Whilst it does take much much longer to eat them when you have to crack them open it's all great fun.

I wonder what happens to the nuts between the time they come off the tree and the time they are to be found on the supermarket shells. I ask this because I'm wondering what the chances of me getting them to grow are. Presumably the worst condition that they could have been exposed to is cold, but simulating a natural winter is often necessary to get tree seeds to grow in this country anyway. Unless anyone suggests a reason why I shouldn't I think I shall plant some as an experiment.

An appeal

One of my life goals is to turn a piece of land into a nature reserve, including planting a large area of woodland. Ian also aims to grow and sell topiary to fund the opening of topiary gardens, similar to those in Maryland...

and tamborine mountain in Queensland (unfortunately I can't find a picture on the internet).

Although we've started planting tree seeds and boxwood cuttings we've only managed to do this on a small scale in the garden and greenhouse. Buying a piece of land now would enable us to get started growing box and privet for topiary on a large scale as well as trying out some other commercial enterprises, including growing trees and plants for sale on ebay, trees for the future nature reserve, pumpkins for halloween, christmas trees etc.


As some of you will know we put an offer in on a lovely piece of land near Okehampton a couple of months ago, but sadly our offer was rejected and it has been taken off the market. Today we looked at another piece of land for sale only a couple of miles from our house. It had massive potential as both a nature reserve and a place to grow all we could ever need. Of course it has a couple of ponds and I'm already wondering how many species of dragonflies and damselflies we could attract ;-). Anyway, whatever happens with this piece of land we do aim to buy some in the very near future and we would really appreciate your help in getting started with the growing...


We're going to be growing as many native trees as we can so if you have any seeds or happen to pass an oak, beech, hazel etc next autumn please please could you collect and save them for us. Similarly if you have hollies, hawthorns, rowans etc sprouting all over your garden then rather than digging them up and discarding them could you please pop them into a pot and we'll come and collect them from you. Obviously I'm not asking you to start digging up seedlings in your local park, but if you do know anyone with seeds or seedlings that they don't want please rescue them for us and allow them to be part of a future nature reserve.


Thank you. You will all be most welcome to visit our land when we buy.

Species lists

I was going to wait until the New Year to blog the species lists for the garden, but there's very little wildlife about now (the odd bee, slug and red admiral being all I've seen this week). All the species below were seen in 2008, with comparitively few in 2007 (the garden being only grass and gravel back then).

MAMMALS:

harvest mouse
grey squirrel
house? mouse

BIRDS:

herring gull
wood pigeon
collared dove
song thrush
blackbird
house sparrow
robin
blue tit
coal tit
greater spotted woodpecker
grey wagtail
wren
crow
magpie
grey wagtail

REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS:

common frog
slow worm
smooth newt

DRAGONFLIES & DAMSELFLIES:

broad-bodied chaser (male)
common darter (male, female, ovipositing)
emperor (female, ovipositing)
migrant hawker (male, female)
southern hawker (male, female, ovipositing)
golden-ringed dragonfly (female, ovipositing)
blue-tailed damselfly
large red damselfly (ovipositing)

BUTTERFLIES:

large white
small white
green-veined white
brimstone
holly blue
gatekeeper
speckled wood
comma
small tortoiseshell
peacock
red admiral

Grey Wagtail

Just a few minutes ago a grey wagtail flew over the house, into the back garden and had a drink at the pond. It stayed for only about 2 minutes and it made me wonder how many other visitors we have to our pond that we are unaware of.

One of my new years resolution's was to make a list of birds that we've seen in the garden. This has been quite troublesome since we have little cover at the house end of the garden and even with my glasses I can't identify the birds at the bottom of the garden. I shall try to take more photos over the next few weeks and then I shall blog a species list for 2008.

Pond 2

Finally.. something to blog about in the garden! It's been very cold in Exeter this last couple of weeks (though we've had no snow or hail like in Ottery St Mary), but this weekend we decided to put in our second pond. We had not originally planned to have two ponds, but after Ian dug up the bush (http://frog-end-wildlife.blogspot.com/2008/08/bye-bye-bush.html) we were left with a big hole and no plans for that bit of border yet. We expanded the hole this week and today we lined it with loft insulation and then with pond liner.

Wrestling with 4 x 3 m of pond liner is not easy (it was even bigger last time), so Ian made the very sensible suggestion that we fill the pond with water before sorting out the edges of the liner. It made it so much easier this time, as did having a hose to fill it with.