Blogs and bees

If you have been wandering around here over the last few months you will have noticed my tardiness in updating this blog.

Unfortunately bees, cheese, the garden plus the unhappy circumstance that I must also go to work to afford to do all the first things on the list, have meant that I have just not got around to it.

Here, then, is a summary of the months since May.

The beekeeping courses are over and I have loved every minute of it. Paul is running a build your own bee hive course next year and I will be doing that with the intention of filling the hive with bees in May.

The cheese making course was brilliant and I make a batch of cheese every weekend now. I have also started making my own bread and feel much better for it.

The growing year has had some brilliant successes and for the most part the heritage seeds have been very good. Failures were the peas (grew really well but had little flavour), melons (too cold for them, I think) sweetcorn (look great but nothing to eat on them) and the Purple Ukraine tomatoes (rot before they ripen).

Successes were the Purple Rainbow Chillis, White Volunteer Courgette, Czar Runner Beans, Longpod Broad Beans, lovely yellow Galina tomatoes, Sanguina beetroot and the outright best crop was the nearly extinct Tamra cucumber. I have had more cucumbers than I could eat and the flavour was fantastic.

I have saved three as seed cucumbers and I will be giving the seed to everyone and also returning some to The Real Seed Company to pass on to other people themselves.

Elsewhere in the garden there was less frogs than usual owing the the frogspawn disappearing, probably down the throat of a local heron. The big pond was happy host to its newty guests again this year and I have seen loads of little efts as I was giving it an occasional clean.

A lot of my planting for next year will be particularly aimed at providing food for the bees and I have already started a special bed of marjoram and hyssop, two buzzy favourites. The tall crops of peas and runner beans will be grown in containers instead and the remaining veg beds can be left for beetroot and onions.

Lastly, I have invested in a dehydrator and am having great fun making lovely dried snacks out of my left over produce.

Although I hate the dark I am almost looking forward to winter this year because I will finally be able to stop and put my feet up! Maybe there is a point to winter after all.

The best thing is planning the year ahead and then in the early spring planting the seeds to begin the whole wonderful cycle all over again. And of course, hopefully there will be a hive of bees to share in the fun.

Frog central

I don't know where they disappeared to after they came to spawn in Pondy but the frogs are now back and have brought several friends!

This little patch of creeping jenny supports six although only three can be seen here. As soon as the sun comes out they stick their little heads out and soak up the rays.

These two seemed quite content as I walked up and down the garden and weren't bothered by me at all.

This adorable gentleman is quite happy to hang about in the blanket weed. Normally I'd have the blanket weed out by now but the baby newts (I call them newtpoles) are living in it and I don't want to disturb them).

Aren't the colours on this next frog just gorgeous. I love his markings and could watch him all day.

Altogether at one time I've counted ten froggy heads sticking out of the water and there are at least three in the older pond too. Sadly, most of the tadpoles ended up as newt food but the upside of that is that the newts have produced and I can watch them grow instead.

Later on this year I intend to take out the old pond and completely rebuild it, then hopefully next year I can transfer all the frogspawn into that one and the newts can have the bigger pond.

In the meantime however I plan to send the summer watching my very beautiful frogs.

Spring

What a lovely time of year this is. April and May are full of so much promise. The days are getting longer and the mornings earlier and working in the garden is both peaceful and exciting.

The tadpoles have been hatched about a month now and are getting bigger. Soon they will begin to show little legs and will lose the gills that have kept them safely in the water so far. Soon they will turn carnivorous and I have a good supply of bloodworms for them to nibble on. Better that than they nibble on each other!


The newts are still with me although soon they will have laid their eggs and have moved on. At the moment I'm making the most of them while they are here. Photographing them is quite difficult as my camera finds it difficult to focus beneath the water surace so I'm afraid this is the best I can do.


Elsewhere the garden is blooming. The Bog Bean is flowering and the other pond plants are all coming to life after the winter cold. By the side of the pond, my Angelica has suddenly gone into overdrive. At this rate, she will be six foot by the summer!


Lastly, the bulb bed that took me so long to put in last autumn has rewarded my work tenfold. Look at this...


Doesn't that just make you feel glad to be alive.

With temperatures reaching 22 degrees C (whatever that is - I still think in F's) it has been a truly glorious weekend. Apart from disappearing during the hottest part of the day when the sun was directly overhead, the newts have had a fine old time, swimming happily in and out of the algae around the mare's tail.

Normally I would have removed the algae but it does no harm and at this stage the tadpoles are also using it for food. If you look you can see some of them enjoying a yummy algae treat.

This is a female palmate newt, slightly lighter in colour than her mate. The male's back feet are also a sooty black colour, whereas her's are the same as her body.

It was also lovely to see this stately gentleman sunning himself in the old pond. With the new des res not far away, it's always good to see that the old pond has not been abandoned.


The tadpoles are also becoming more adventurous and are starting to swim around. They are mostly tail with little black heads at the front and are less than a centimetre long. To them the pond must seem like an ocean.

Newts and frogs

This beautiful creature is a palmate newt (Lissotriton helveticus). It is a relatively small species of newt and lives in ponds, canals and agricultural land. It is endangered in many European countries but fortunately is relatively common in the UK.


Imagine my delight when I saw a glimpse of a newt in my pond last Sunday. Knowing that such creatures liked my pond enough to move in was a huge seal of approval.

Tonight when I went to visit the tadpoles I saw three palmate newts beneath the watercress stealthily watching the new activity avidly and I realised that my tadpoles have provided the equivalent of a newt 'all you can eat' buffet.

It truly brought home for me that nature sometimes does things that we don't like but we must not interfere. My newts will eat the tadpoles and in turn the surviving tadpoles will grow into young frogs who will eat the newt's eggs.

Nature knows what she is doing but that doesn't make it any easier to watch.