Happy New Year

It's been a while, but we have been somewhat distracted. Since our last post, we have acquired a new house, a new garden gnome and most importantly, a new garden.

We have managed to assemble some raised beds and are hoping that we will be able to dedicate less time to childcare and more to plantcare in 2017.

We also have a pond so expect to be inundated with frogs to keep the slugs at bay...

And our new garden gnome is in position

Photo courtesy Olof Williamson

We're set to go. All we need now is Spring...

First day of spring

According to the meteorological calendar, Saturday was the first day of spring, and the Harbills celebrated this by spending the afternoon in the garden for the first time since the autumn.

 And as if by magic, our garden actually seems to be showing signs of spring.

We even had to sow another batch of broad beans as our first lot are flowering.

Harbill and the Giant Squash

After two disappointing years, we have finally had a summer that has been kind to our squash. In fact, by mid-August it looked like we were growing nothing but squash:

At one point, even the wild flowers were in danger of suffocation by squash

We haven't picked them yet, as we are waiting for them to harden off before the first frost, but we are looking forward to a winter of squash content.

Our Boston Winter Squash (see back of photo) is actually bigger than Ferdy.

Noise Pollenation

This year it has been noisy in Harbill's Garden. But luckily, this is not due to the hum of traffic but the buzzing of the many bees that seem to be populating our garden.

A honey bee on our runner bean flowers

We have also noticed that the bumblebees bizarrely like sunbathing on our french bean leaves. They seem to use them as a resting place to recoup before getting back to work on pollenating more flowers (especially our squash flowers please bumblebees!)

But not only are we seeing more bees than ever, much to our delight we have also noticed an abundance of butterflies. For the first time we have seen a Gatekeeper in our garden:

And every day, at around 3pm, a Comma settles on our conifers:

We have spotted a Ringlet:

And because we have no brassicas, we are even happy to let the many Cabbage Whites roam around our vegetable patch.

And this year there is also another source of noise in the garden, that does nothing to help pollenate our runner beans.

Where the Wild Things Grow

This is the third year of our wild flower garden and, aside from a few initial sprinklings of seeds, it has been mostly left to its own devices.

As you can see it is dominated by foxgloves and daisies but if you look more closely there are some hidden gems.

We would give you this flower's name but we don't know it...

And we only know that the top left is an Astrantia major 'Roma'. Feel free to enlighten us about the others!

The Harbills Are Away

Our cabin on the Edenhall Estate

As a slight divergence from our normal post, we cannot resist a mention of our rather blissful holiday in the Eden Valley. There were no vegetables and, contrary to our own garden, not a sparrow in sight.

There was however, a stunning log cabin set on the River Eamont.

The River Eamont

We saw: jays, an otter, a kingfisher, a sparrowhawk, a songthrush, a grey wagtail, oystercatchers, a 2lb brown trout (brilliantly caught by Billy)...

And, a red squirrel

Bi-no-diversity

Much as Muffin's demise was distressing, we have recently noticed a resurgence of birdlife in the garden; we've been having regular visits from songthrushes, bluetits, goldfinches and greenfinches, to name but a few.

When Springwatch announced their garden biodiversity survey (the Bioblitz), we felt that we were the ideal participants and so this Sunday, armed with camera, binoculars, clipboard and a plethora of reference books we set up camp in the garden.

It started well with a sighting of a sparrow.

Passer domesticus

And then there were two!

Passer domesticus

Later on we set up our camera aimed to capture the greenfinches that we had seen the previous day. And lo and behold, what was this we saw?

Passer domesticus

Another sparrow.

So, we decided to focus our attention on the bird feeder. Surely this would bring some variety...

Passer domesticus

The Harbills decided not to upload their results to the Bioblitz website.