Butterflies love Buddleia

Every garden should have a buddleia bush.

 

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Butterflies and bees – and other insects – absolutely love buddleia and I’ve spent many hours in the August sunshine simply watching the different butterflies – this is a peacock which is one of our prettiest but our buddleia attracts red admirals, tortoiseshells and commas as well as speckled woods and cabbage whites. The common purple buddleia is quite vigorous and needs a lot of cutting back so choose a calmer variety if you have a small garden. Keep cutting off the dead flowers and it will continue flowering through September.

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Speckled Wood butterfly on potato leaves

Our Wildlife Pool

A pool attracts all sorts of plants, animals and insects.

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It’s difficult to believe that when we originally dug out this pool and lined it with local clay it was just bare soil. I was told by our local farmer to pull out the trees when they were just saplings – should have listened – now we are having to cut them down.

I also didn’t believe the farmer that bulrushes would take over the pool – I was so delighted to have my own bulrush that I left it and, within a few years the pool was full of bulrushes and not much else. Then it dried out one summer and the next year the bulrushes had almost gone but yellow flag irises were taking over and the water lily was looking decidedly peaky. So you do need to maintain a pond to keep the balance but it’s worth it – we get lots damselflies and dragonflies as well as frogs, toads and newts.

Impossible to believe that the picture below was taken from virtually the same spot in May 2006!

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Poppies will grow anywhere

Poppies will grow anywhere

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Poppies will grow anywhere but they need bare soil that has been turned over recently to germinate – which is why they grow so well in cornfields.   We now have two ganders and one drake which are obviously not very productive so I need to think about some mates for them. We inherited the geese and the sensible thing to do would be to get two female geese and have one of the ganders for Christmas but, as with all livestock, it’s not easy to make difficult decisions and the more you put them off the harder they become.

We bought the drake to keep the duck company – and so we would have some fertile eggs if the duck went broody – but then the fox got Jasmine so we were left with one duck again. To make matters worse Drake started chasing the hens but I had to move them to a safer place out of reach of the fox anyway. Now winter is coming and I need to move the hens back into the hen house so need to decide whether to get two ducks to keep Drake happy or – well the only other option is to find a new home for him as once something has a name it’s impossible to eat it!

Spring plants that rabbits like

There are lots of spring plants that rabbits like and, fed in moderation, they are really good for them – too much green stuff can upset their digestion – but a few leaves of a few different plants  every day is fine – and they really enjoy them.

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Comfrey leaves and flowers are a favourite – not to be confused with foxglove which has the same shape leaves.  Comfrey is very easy to distinguish at this time of year as it’s in flower and foxglove is just leaves.

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Foxglove is digitalis and very poisonous so make sure you pick comfrey plants with flowers.

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Rabbits like most herbs, these are chives which have a slightly onion smell.

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Another spring weed in garlic mustard, or Jack-by-the-hedge which has a mild garlic scent – rabbits like flowers and leaves – smaller plants are most tender.

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And of course the dandelion, just leaves and again in moderation – just two or three leaves a day.

I like to give each rabbit a choice of leaves and see which they eat first – they don’t all choose the same ones first.  Dandelion likes comfrey and Fiver likes chives.

Every day I get real pleasure from picking a few choice titbits and watching the rabbits enjoy eating them – the hens like some plants too, particularly the brassicas, but their favourite is always bread and they come running when they see me carrying a basket.

 

Daffodils

Daffodils – I love picking some of the first daffodils when they are in bud and seeing them open out, unfolding their petals, bringing spring scents into the room.  Wordsworth’s poem reminds me of  fields of daffodils in Cornwall ‘fluttering and dancing’ in the breeze.

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I wandered lonely as a cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

Coltsfoot

Coltsfoot

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One of my favourite spring flowers is coltsfoot – unusual in that the flowers appear before the leaves.

The Christian word ‘Easter’ is derived from the pagan word ‘Eastre’.  Eastre or Ostara is believed to have been the Saxon Goddess of the Dawn, hence the reason why Easter is celebrated at the time of the Spring Equinox.

The connection between Easter and the ‘egg’ symbolising new life also originates from pre-Christian times but fits perfectly with the Christian belief of the resurrection.

Although our youngest son is now 15 (and the others are 25 and 22) we still have an Easter Egg Hunt each year – but now with cryptic clues and riddles they have to solve rather than a trail of tiny Easter eggs.  Clues like:

What has to be broken before you can use it – and where can you find some?  The answer is of course – eggs – in the hen house.

Family time is so important – and often so difficult to organise with so many computer distractions – but it’s always worth it.

 

How to be Truly Happy

How to be Truly Happy

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If someone asked me what common  theme my Twitter account has then it would have to be ‘Things that make me Happy’.  My glass is always half full – there’s absolutely no point in looking at life any other way.  I collect beautiful pictures, bluebirds and daffodils, great sayings: “There’s no point looking back ‘cos that’s not the way you’re going.”  Funny video clips and happy tunes – I absolutely love ‘Room without a Roof’ because everyone dances to it and I love sharing happiness.

John is the same – and has finally published a book which is full of happy pictures and inspirational words – you can download it from:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00V6Z5PYE?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

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I have had bad times, days when I just couldn’t face getting out of bed, mornings when just the thought of cleaning my teeth was too much effort – but I’ve always found something to focus on, some reason to carry on, something I love – and on those days I have found if I can just get outside and feel the sun on my face and the breeze on my skin, the scent of primroses and a robin singing, life is suddenly wonderful again – even if it’s just for a moment when ‘a chaffinch sings on the orchard bough’ or ‘a crowd of golden daffodils’, and you stop and immerse yourself in nature and forget everything else.

Many people find meditation helps – and is often much better therapy than drugs for lots of stress-related conditions, like headaches, insomnia, IBS, indigestion and phobias.  Sleeping and eating are a vital part of every day and our bodies need a regular balance of both or they start to complain.  www.meditationalstate.com has some beautiful music and images.

Running a business, working for yourself, can be really hard sometimes – but if you love what you do then it’s like having a hobby 7 days a week – and if you do have a bad day where everything seems to go wrong – it’s just one bad day – and you know you’ll be doing something you love doing tomorrow.

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Rabbits – ear mites

One of my rabbits got ear mites.  When she first arrived and I checked her over it looked like there was dirt in one of her ears – so I looked it up and discovered she probably had ear mites so I put oil in her ears for a week and thought no more about it.  Then, last week, I noticed one of her ears looked black and, sure enough, her ear was all scabby and the ear mites were back with a vengeance.

So I’m treating both ears with oil every day – any oil is fine but I find sunflower oil flows better than olive oil and I use a medicine tube to administer it.  It’s quite easy and I massage the base of her ears afterwards which she seems to enjoy.

The rabbit ear mite, Psoroptes Cuniculi, is a parasite and has 4 different life stages – egg, larva, protonymph and adult mite with eggs hatching after 4 days.  The oil stops the mites being able to move, mate and lay eggs and eventually they die, but you need to persevere as the cycle can take as long as a month.

There’s no need to bathe the ears as the scabs will just fall off once the mites are destroyed and the ears usually heal quickly.

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It’s really easy to administer the oil with a medicine tube as you can do it one-handed and hold the rabbit still with the other hand.

I shall be treating all my rabbits weekly with oil until I’m sure we’ve got rid of the ear mites altogether and then it’s probably as well to treat them once a month – and that way I can keep a check on them.  My rabbits are kept in cages so there’s less chance of ear mites spreading but it’s still a good idea to move rabbits occasionally and thoroughly clean their living quarters with disinfectant.

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The days are getting longer

The days are getting longer, Spring is in the air, with the promise of summer to come, there’s a great sense of excitement in the garden, you can almost feel the grass growing and the daffodils bursting into brilliant yellow splashes of sunshine.

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Here is Charlie with his foster-mum – Mrs Grey – and I’ve called the other chick Ebony – I think he (or she) is a pure  is a pure Vorwerk.  If so (s)he’ll look like one of these when (s)he grows up:

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This is Captain Von Vorwerk with Violet, they are quite impressive hens and they lay little white eggs.

What Happened to Amber?

What Happened to Amber?

After the squirrel episode yesterday, when I went to let the hens out, I looked for Amber, half expecting a squirrel to be in her pen again – and all I found was a pile of feathers!  The door of the pen was open and the protective wire had been ripped off the bottom of the pen.  Amazingly Charlie chick was OK but cheeping pitifully.

I put him in with the other broody hen who has two chicks and watched with my heart in my mouth to see if she would accept him – quite often hens will not have anything to do with chicks they haven’t hatched themselves – but thankfully she let him snuggle down with the others under her feathers and he stopped cheeping.

So what had eaten Amber?  I’ve seen foxes rip open wire pens and get through really small gaps but foxes generally carry off their prey and eat it somewhere else.  A polecat maybe?  I know that I didn’t leave the door open because there’s a picture of the pen on this website that I posted yesterday – so what opened the door?

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